Whatever the reason you’re here, whether you’re honest-to-goodness house hunting, you’re searching for images to tack to your dream home vision board, or you just need something to gawk at to pass the time cooped up indoors, enjoy a virtual tour of this jaw-dropping Texas home on the market.
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By the numbers: 4002 Tyx Trail, Austin, Texas 78669 (pronunciation is anyone’s best guess | $17,500,000 | 12,002 square feet | 1993 (year built) | 6 bedrooms | 8 full, 2 partial bathrooms | 30-acre lot
Nestled on a peninsula overlooking the Pedernales River in Spicewood, Texas, the “architecturally significant” 30-acre estate known formally as the Retreat at Lick Creek Lodge, informally as 4002 Tyx Trail, has long attracted special attention -- the Austin-adjacent abode was built to resemble a deck of playing cards splayed out across the Texas Hill Country. The home was designed by celebrated Texas architect John Covert Watson, apprentice to the inimitable Frank Lloyd Wright.
A devotee of organic architecture, Watson sought to build a structure unlike any other. As much a work of art as it is a home, the wood and glass structure at 4004 Tyx Trail seeks to strike a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature. The domicile was formed using locally harvested wood, copious expanses of glass, steel beams and desert masonry, which, when combined, creates “a grounded intentional yet transparent interior-exterior synthesis,” the property’s listing explains. Dubbing the abode an “iconic visual statement,” listing agents at Sotheby’s took particular care to applaud the home’s “distinctive hyperbolic paraboloid roof design.”
The 12,002-square-foot compound comprises six bedrooms, eight full and two partial bathrooms, a home theater in addition to a screening room, a fitness center, yoga-space, guest house, private grotto outfitted with a negative-edge pool, waterfall, and sundeck and, well, the list could go and on and on but we’ll be brief. In summary, amenities abound at 4002 Tyx Trail.
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“The Compound has served as a personal residence for an avid art, film and music supporter and entrepreneur and is designed with spaces for entertaining large groups as well as intimate enclaves throughout the property, lending itself to an ideal executive retreat, personal residence or hill country getaway,” the property’s listing reads.
The property has hosted concerts by an array of Texas musicians, including Billy Joe Shaver, The Flatlanders, Kinky Friedman, and Pat Green.
Contemporary architecture aficionados with deep pockets and an affinity for the odd can finally escape the banality of everyday architecture for a retreat that forsakes the norms -- for a price, that is.
If you’ve got $17,500,000 smackeroos burning a hole in your pocket and you’re ready to pony up the big bucks to call this one-of-a-kind estate your forever home, give listing agent Susan Barringer a ring at (512) 328-0058. Click here for more information on the home.
Scroll through the gallery at the top of the page to take a gander at this quirky Texas listing.
Another noteworthy architectural contribution by Watson includes the Nautilus House, a bright white home overlooking Lake Travis. It resembles a massive sand dollar. Viewed straight on, the house resembles a mushroom. Seen from above, it looks like a massive sand dollar.
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