Webber + Studio, Architects

10/09/2026

🔳 From the air it reads as a drawing. From the ground it is something to climb.

Adaptive Tree-Use is our second Fortlandia installation at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Six timber cones on a steel frame, linked by a rope canopy, installed with heavy machinery along a single shared lane.

What you notice on site is that almost nobody stands back and looks at it. Children go up the logs, lie flat in the netting, and disappear into a cone and out the other side. The geometry is deliberate. The point of the geometry is the hour a kid spends not thinking about it.

Designed by Andrew Thompson, Rafael Jiménez, Diego González and Sofía Carrillo.

Built by Skelly Build
Steel by Red Dog Welding Co.
Rope canopy by Monkeyhouse

Aerial footage by James Humphrey

Open now at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

10/03/2026

🔳 Six trees you can climb inside.

Adaptive Tree-Use is open now at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

To us a tree is shade, timber or a view. To almost everything else it is shelter, lookout, hiding place and home. The fort is a grove of six sculptural tree forms clad in Ashe juniper and strung with netting, built so children can climb in, tuck themselves inside, and look back out at the woods the way an animal would.

It did not start there. The first version had a central trunk with four spokes, one for each season. The studio review was blunt. The trunk was the strongest idea on the wall, the spokes were the weakest, and Central Texas does not have four tidy seasons to diagram anyway. So the spokes went and the tree became the whole project. The favorite idea goes if it isn't the right one.

Ashe juniper is what most Texans call cedar and clear off their land, but it is native here, it grows straight, and it is durable enough to have held up fence lines for generations. The golden-cheeked warbler, the only bird that nests exclusively in Texas, builds its nest from strips of its bark.

Six steel pipe frames from Red Dog Welding Co., clad in juniper by Skelly Build with the logs run long so the final angle could be set by eye, and nets from Monkeyhouse once the grove was standing. The bark is untreated on purpose. It will peel, the logs will grey, and the parts kids climb most will polish smooth under their hands.

Read the full build story: https://vist.ly/5kund

Thank you to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Designed by Andrew Thompson, Rafael Jiménez, Sofía Carrillo and Diego González.

Our design Adaptive Tree-Use was selected for Fortlandia 2026 at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Six climbable Ashe juniper trees, open through February.

09/08/2026

🔳 Adaptive Tree-Use.

Two ideas in one name.

The first is adaptive reuse. The whole thing is built from reclaimed local ashe juniper and repurposed oilfield pipe, salvaged material turned into something children are meant to climb on.

The second is what animals already do. A hollow in a tree was never designed for anyone in particular, which is exactly why so many creatures end up living in one.

So the fort is six cones, three to nine feet tall, with a net strung between them. Children climb them, tuck themselves inside, and get at the trees roughly the way the things that live in them do.

Our second win at Fortlandia. Opens to the public Friday, October 2 at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

Designed by Andrew Thompson, Rafael Jiménez, Diego González, Senior Staff Designer, and Sofía Carrillo. Built with , and .

09/04/2026

🔳 Twenty-nine years ago today, David Webber started Webber + Studio. He was 29.

He is 58 now, which means he has spent exactly half his life running it.

Speaking to the studio this morning, he was asked what has mattered most over those years. He did not say talent and he did not say timing. He said tenacity. There is a great deal that will discourage you from keeping a business going, and the only real answer is to be stubborn enough to roll up your sleeves and solve the problem in front of you.

What he did not mention, and what the people in the room would, is that the thing he has actually built is a studio where people keep finding out what they are capable of. Careers have grown here. Several of Austin's practices trace back through this office.

Twenty-nine years, still Austin-rooted. Consistent process, unique outcomes. 🍰🎉

09/02/2026

🔳 Architecture does not have to be extravagant to be excellent.

That is David Webber writing about why we put North Hills Drive Residence forward for this year's AIA Austin Homes Tour.

The house does not announce itself. From the street it reads as an ordinary Austin home, and that was deliberate. The work went into proportion, light, and restraint rather than scale. When a house is this quiet, every choice has to earn its place.

Read the full piece: https://vist.ly/5h3wm

North Hills Residence is on the 40th Annual AIA Austin Homes Tour, October 24 and 25.
Tickets: https://vist.ly/5h3wk

08/25/2026

🔳 Before: a house closed off from the landscape around it.

🔲 After: one continuous space, from living room to terrace to yard.

The renovation worked inside the original roof rather than building outward.

The new upper level sits within that roof geometry, then shifts to one side.

That single move lifts the ceiling below it and opens up daylight, airflow, and the views to the back.

⏭️Swipe through for the five moves that got us there, and the house they add up to.

North Hills Residence is on the 40th Annual AIA Austin Homes Tour, October 24 and 25: https://vist.ly/5g3kk

Photography by Chase Daniel. Tour presented by AIA Austin.

08/21/2026

🔳 This year the AIA Austin Homes Tour turns 40.

Our founder, David Webber, has gone almost every year since he was a teenager, long before Webber + Studio existed. In a new post on the blog, he writes about where the tour started, why it still works four decades later, and what it means for a firm to be included.

We're honored to have a project on this year's tour. More on that soon.

Read the full story: https://vist.ly/5fqre

The 2026 AIA Austin Homes Tour runs October 24 to 25. Tickets are on Eventbrite now.

08/18/2026

🔳 North Hills Residence is on the 40th Annual AIA Austin Homes Tour, October 24–25.

It's the house you'd walk past. That was the intent.

The project began with a problem: the house had turned its back on its own backyard. The rear was closed off, so a carefully designed landscape sat just out of reach.

Rather than add square footage, we worked inside the existing structure while keeping the original hipped roof and reshaping the section instead. A new upper level scribes into that geometry and shifts laterally, which opens a shaded terrace below and a double-height space above. At the street it stays quiet. Inside, the living area now runs uninterrupted out to the terrace and into the yard.

Nine houses on this year's tour, self-guided across both days. Tickets at the link in bio.

AIA Austin

05/14/2026

🔳 The best homes do more than shelter a family.
ㅤ
They support the way people move, gather, grow, host, retreat, and reconnect.
ㅤ
For Max and Sara, their home began as a 1950s ranch house on an unusual triangular lot in Austin. What could have been a constraint became the starting point for something much more personal.
ㅤ
Nearly ten years after completing the project, they still describe the home not only in terms of design, but in terms of feeling.
ㅤ
As Max shared, the process was about more than architecture. It was about trust, facilitation, and understanding the human side of building a home.
ㅤ
That is the part of the work we value most.

This is a short excerpt from a longer conversation we’ll be sharing soon on our YouTube channel. Stay tuned.

03/08/2026

🔳 International Women’s Day

Great places are never the result of one perspective.

They are shaped by diverse voices, ideas, and leadership.

Today we recognize the women across architecture and design whose work continues to influence the future of our built environment.