Find and Keep

A custom home kitted out with all the latest luxury fittings, fixtures, and finishes is the ultimate house fantasy. It's relatively easy to build lavishly appointed houses, but only the well-heeled can afford such indulgences. Austin, TX-based Gomes + Staub Architects takes the opposite approach -- good space planning mixed with salvaged materials and inexpensive finishes sourced from the most unlikely places. On a pragmatic level, devoting a smaller proportion of the client's available funds into fixtures and finishes allows more of the budget to be used on spatial reconfiguration, says principal Francisco Gornes. Good space with ample natural light, generous and unexpected volumes, and spatial connectivity is more important in making a building which people enjoy inhabiting.