On a farm road in East Texas, an existing barn and the lineage of nearby agricultural structures provide the starting point for a dwelling both rooted in place, yet open to reinvention.  Designed for an artist and curator turned farmers, FM900 is more than a homestead set on a 60-Acre property: it is a rural laboratory where art, agriculture, and community converge.  A main residence and two outbuildings (a garage and a produce barn), gather around a central courtyard oriented northwest to a dense mot of trees.  The siting of the courtyard shields from north winter winds and opens southward to summer breezes, balancing shelter and openess with intetion and precision.  

The long, linear house recalls the proportions of the agrarian barn, anchored by a deep porch that shades the east façade in summer while inviting the low winter sun into its living spaces.  Corrugated metal panel, concrete block, and cast-in-place concrete form a humble palette of restraint, softened by wood siding at the entry and inside, that recalls the warmth of old western homesteads.  This sober Architecture does not call attention to itself, but frames the rhythms of the farm, the landscape, and the cultural life of its owners.  Here, the cultivation of soil and the cultivation of community and art become one and the same.