My Austin interior design firm has been expanding. While we loved spending the last five years in our homey space dubbed The Studio, the walls could no longer hold our growing team (or the ever-accumulating fabric samples and antiques purchased by me). 

 

Over the last year or so, I’ve been on a journey to find us a new home, which led me back to the central Highland neighborhood. I made many fond memories in my youth here, and I am excited to embark on a new chapter as I officially take residence with my team in what we call The Workshop. The space is much more industrial than our old repurposed bungalow, and it celebrates the nature of our work. 

 

It’s an exciting time for the neighborhood, too, as other Austinites reimagine the landscape and make homes for their own businesses. I see a new design-centric community emerging, and I’m eager to see what unfolds. It all feels much larger than simply four new walls to contain our work.

 

This is the making of the Highland Design Atelier. 

The High Points of Highland 

Located in the center of Austin, the Highland neighborhood is home to industrial workshops that reflect the work we do as designers. Interior design isn’t glamorous shopping trips and project reveal days. It’s working with contractors and craftspeople to design bespoke solutions or spending countless hours scouring antique warehouses for pieces of character. It’s work for a workshop. 

 

On my new commute to our Workshop, I’m reminded of the rewarding nature of work as I pass by the metal and glass suppliers, as well as the muffler and auto shops that I now call neighbors. A thriving design district is emerging alongside these workshops, including an upholstery workroom, a woodshop, a vintage store, and, of course, us. It feels exciting to be part of these early days. 

 

Highland is undergoing a period of reimagining, as it has in the decades before us. It’s hard to picture it now, but this area used to be farmland and orchards located on “the outskirts” of Austin. At the turn of the century, it was home to an orphanage. In the 1920s, it was the site of the UT airport, and the hangars remain a grounding anchor in the neighborhood’s landscape. By the 1950s, suburban developments had begun to emerge. In 1971, the Highland Mall opened, marking the first enclosed shopping mall in Central Texas and a place that I spent many days of my teenage years. Now, the long-closed mall is being redeveloped into an ACC college campus, residences, and offices.  

Oh, and we cannot forget the famous Violet Crown shopping center featured in Dazed and Confused, which is right across the street from our Workshop! Highland is a living part of Austin’s history, and we get to be part of the next chapter. 

My Connection to Highland

I grew up here in Austin, and like many other teens of my generation, we loved spending our carefree summer days or weekend afternoons at Barton Springs, or even better, the mall. We’d splurge on Orange Julius and salty Chinese takeout in the food court between catching the latest blockbusters at the mall theater or getting custom tees printed at one of the kiosks. You know the ones that had funny sayings on them like, “I’m with Stupid” or “Have a Nice Day.” Peak fashion!

 

While we lived close to Barton Creek Square Mall, the rare occasions my dad drove us to Highland Mall were highlights of my youth. It may have just been because it was further away and felt special, or it could have been the fact that my favorite stores like Express, Units, Laura Ashley, and the fudge place were all there. It was hours and hours of joy to browse around that mall!

Honoring Highland in the Name

Flash forward to all these years later, and I found myself near the old Highland Mall site again, just a mile or so away, when my realtor called to show me a cinder block workshop he thought would be perfect for the new location of my Austin interior design firm.  

 

A flood of memories came back. I put in an offer immediately. And I got the building. 

 

Once we became official residents of the Highland neighborhood, I started to think about how I wanted to brand our new building. The flat cinder block construction offers a blank canvas that can evolve with us as we grow, or even accommodate a new division of Amity Worrel & Co., or even a future resident down the line. 

 

It was clear to me that we had to honor this special neighborhood. And so, the Highland Design Atelier was born.

The Workshop Space

Before we moved in, the Highland Design Atelier was built in 1955 and originally served as a stone cutting workshop, a lovely tie-in to our industry. Then, it went on to be a metal shop, printing house, and marketing firm before our team of designers took over. 

The 2,800-square-foot workshop has everything we need for our thriving Austin residential interior design business. There are 12 enormous windows to flood the space with natural light. There is ample parking (an asset in Austin) for staff, clients, and visiting vendors. There’s a loading dock to receive deliveries and store all the furnishings we acquire for clients (and myself). And there are two private offices built out for presentations and meetings. 

 

The rest of the creative workspace is an open loft reminiscent of 1980s SoHo, allowing us to move about freely and collaborate with one another. The bare-bones structure provides an ever-changing canvas that lends itself to being constantly reinvented and reimagined, depending on our current work inspirations. And we’re loving every second of it.

 

The new space is all about function, so what better way to style the space than with a dose of inspiration from the Bauhaus School? The Workshop is furnished with pieces collected from estate sales, yard sales, and antique stores, mixed with customized upholstery pieces we have designed or redesigned using new textiles. The walls of fabric samples and the cork worktable make our fabric library a practical and functional workspace to work in. Even our office cat Basket loves the space, and they’re a tough one to please!  

Our Plaguing Mascot

It’s unconventional, but our Austin interior design firm’s makeshift mascot is the Grackle. It’s a brave and urban bird that doesn’t scare easily and is exceptionally clever. All things we like to think of ourselves as! 

 

My memory of grackles comes from the plagues (yes, grackles travel in plagues) that would descend upon Highland Mall during the spring evenings when crickets would come out and gather under the parking lot lights. The grackles would screech and feast, making a noisy scene as we left the mall at sundown. 

 

The chaos has lodged itself as a positive memory for me. And of course, it was only fitting to have our own plague of grackles cut out of metal and added as a sculpture to the front of the workshop to welcome everyone as they arrive. They make a nice addition to the wattle fencing outside our industrial space.

Return to Highland

I loved the drive up to Highland for the mall trips of my youth. Now, I love the drive to my own Workshop space in this thriving Austin neighborhood. 

What can I say? It feels good to call Highland home.