Flower Child

Laura Loera’s Home Brings the Outdoors In

Words by Jess Hagemann Photos by Shelby Bella & kitchen image by Troo

Arcing gracefully up from the center of Laura Loera’s open, airy living room are three long-stemmed echinacea flowers: a potent plant popular in traditional herbal medicine and the focal point of this East Austin home.

Standing more than fifteen feet tall, the purple coneflowers form part of a mural created specifically for Laura’s home by Austin artist Rebecca Barbour. Lit by two opposing walls of windows, the mural anchors the rest of the home’s innovative architecture and, otherwise, minimalist design.

“I wanted an interior courtyard,” Laura explains, “like my family had in Mexico—something to bring the outdoors in.” When the long, narrow lot on East 2nd Street limited her house’s possible footprint, at the advice of architect Mark Reynolds, she built up instead of out, incorporating enough natural light and “green things” (like the mural, as well as a plethora of potted plants) to make it “kind of jungly in here.” The rooftop patio, plus a shaded, second-story “outdoor reading nook,” don’t hurt, either!

While echinacea isn’t Laura’s favorite flower—she prefers sunflowers—it grows abundantly in Mexico, as well as in the Holly neighborhood where Google Technical Account Manager Laura and her partner now reside. It also represents healing, a symbol Laura welcomed into her new home.

A house with “good bones”

Laura first bought the property in 2010. At the time, it came with a 1940s casita, which Laura describes as being “cute” and having “good bones.” After five years with only 1100 square feet of space, she was ready to “upgrade” in order to accommodate visits from her large extended family. She found a buyer willing to move the casita to Bastrop, leaving her a blank slate to begin again.

The 2600-square-foot steel-and-concrete structure that now dominates the space is kept soft enough for this flower child, thanks to Patrice Rios of Troo Designs who helped Laura add “pops of color,” like a forget-me-not blue stove, a beautifully designed kitchen with rose-red leather stools, and lush goldenrod curtains, to the home’s monochrome color palette.

Together, these details shape a garden that never needs watering.

The Tiles Steal the Show

The Mexican tile in Laura’s home makes each of her bathrooms sing with whimsical luxury. She went directly to the manufacturer (located in Dolores Hidalgo, a city in Guanajuato that Laura’s great-grandmother called home) to source the hand-tinted, unusually-shaped tiles, which range from clean black and metallic silver diamonds on the floor of the guest bathroom, to grass green shards surrounding the mirror of the upstairs guest bedroom.

Perhaps most striking is the “mermaid bathroom” in Laura’s master suite which was inspired by a painting of this fantastical creature that she picked up in San Antonio. The shower is stratified in “layers” of ombre aqua tiles cut like fish scales. Standing in Laura’s shower is akin to feeling the majesty of the sea engulf you as warm rainwater pours down from above.