freeway and its menacingly named "feeder road," the property, an acre-sized slope was shielded by at least some of the noise and pollution by a grove of fine trees, and a greensward along a nearby creek, along which a public trail runs.

Moore understood the apprehensiveness of his new neighbors, who were fiercely protective of what remained of the "soul" of their violated neighborhood. What he did not want to do was declare his tenancy with a monument. Instead, he wanted to make a place that would respect the scale and patterns of the neighborhood, and unobtrusively tuck under the limbs of the stately Post and Shumard Oaks. And even though the careworn 1930's-era bungalow on the property (that had succumbed to a "ranch" addition in the 1940's) offered little in the way of promise, Moore felt it was important not to sweep in and erase the house, but keep it intact as a reminder of the site's history.

For starters, the notion of a "compound" seemed right, since Moore and Andersson could break down

the mass of their needs - two homes and a studio - into constituent parts, thereby reducing the apparent scale. Compound also implied a loose confederation of buildings that could take advantage of connections and overlap to create what Moore often described as "chances for encounter."

Ever since childhood road trips throughout the West, and through to his Master's thesis at Princeton, which focused on the Spanish adobes of Monterey, California, Moore was always interested in the Hispanic antecedents of American architecture. The idea of the courtyard, into which the attention and life of the inhabitants could focus, protected by a thick-walled shell, still seemed a worthy model, given Austin's pleasant climate. Moore was also fascinated by what might be considered the antipodes of the Texas Hispanic typology, the German or Prussian or Alsatian vestige of the thin-walled dwelling, built as clusters of small, toy-like structures in communities surrounding Austin. Instead of focusing inward, these houses turned their attention instead outward, to the land the inhabitants came to tend as farmers or ranchers, by