Design firm Studio 512 has created a whimsical guest dwelling for a Texas home that features angled walls clad in oversized shingles, and interior spaces that narrow and widen based on how they are used.
Photograph by Casey Dunn
Created for a television and documentary film producer, The Hive sits behind a bungalow-style main residence in Austin. Encompassing 550 square feet (51 square metres), the two-storey guest dwelling contains a kitchen and living room at ground level, and a bedroom and office up above. The sculptural building was designed and built by Studio 512, a local practice led by architect Nicole Blair.

The building's irregular shape is an intriguing response to local rules. The city required that the footprint of this guest house be no larger than 320 square feet (30 square metres). In order to create a bigger dwelling, Blair added a floor and incorporated walls that slant outward.
"Walls tilt from the slab, hugging building setback planes and an angled utility easement at the back of the property, to add volume where needed ? evoking the shape of a beehive," the designer said.
Exterior walls are clad in large cedar shakes that were fabricated using old roofing material. Various-sized windows are framed in white and bring daylight into the compact guest home.

Inside the dwelling, rooms widen and narrow, based on how the space is used. According to Blair, this strategy was informed by the principles represented in the Vitruvian Man, the fa...