Cover Story _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
suffering with mold and other sensitivities . We would like to see better practices put in place across the board and education requirements in our industry ,” says Lillie .
Doug offers another example : “ We built the Inglewood residence , which was featured on the prestigious AIA Austin Homes Tour in 2020 . This Frank Lloyd Wright inspired masterpiece included a self-performed custom terrazzo foundation using 1800 pounds of various colored glass , which was hand spread into the three-tiered foundation and then polished , to create a unique finish . We spent weeks working with the client to develop her perfect ratio of colors and sizes of glass into her floor , building mockups out of our workshop . This home also featured a revolutionary method for air sealing homes from the outside and is wellknown in the building world as Zip 2.0 , featured on Matt Risinger ’ s popular YouTube channel . It ’ s all part of our mission to build multigenerational homes that not only our kids will be proud to see , but also our grandkids .”
Supporting the company ’ s physical operations is its strong social media presence , much of which revolves around education .
“ Something we ’ re both passionate about is what we call ‘ co-opetition ’, which is something I valued from my career in tech , working on open-source software , so we embraced it in our homebuilding business too ,” says Lillie . “ In the same spirit as open-source technology , it means sharing our means and methods of doing things in an effort to educate and better the entire industry , as well as improve building standards .”
Creating sanctuaries
Combining their passions for social media and education , Lillie and Doug ’ s latest venture is ‘ Design Build Diaries ,’ a YouTube channel dedicated to showcasing the Render ATX homebuilding process from concept to completion . “ We ’ re educating people on how to build a custom home in Austin by documenting the entire process using two of our current projects ,” Doug explains . “ We ’ re already getting great feedback from people that have repeated our ideas . We can then use their feedback to further improve the process , so it really is a forum for exchanging knowledge .”
Image © Casey Dunn
44