The Granddaddy of Homes Tours

I went on my first AIA Austin Homes Tour when I was a teenager. I was already an architecture junkie by then, the kind of kid who would spend a Saturday walking through other people’s houses just because I loved spaces that much. I have gone back almost every single year since. I have a pretty good memory for architecture, and I honestly cannot think of a single year I missed.

This year the tour turns 40. I have been there for almost all of it.

Where it started

The very first Austin Homes Tour was put together by Gregory Free, a mentor of mine who I now consider a friend, along with Sharon Rue, who was the executive director of AIA Austin at the time. What they built together became something much bigger than either of them probably expected. Austin is the city that founded the modern homes tour format, and we are the chapter that perfected it. Other AIA chapters across the country, including ones in cities far larger than Austin, come to us and ask how we do it. Even the homes tours in Houston and Dallas, cities with a lot more people and a lot more money, do not have the reputation ours does.

That is not a small thing to be proud of. It is the granddaddy of every architecture tour in the country, and it started here.

A tour we know well

This is not our first time on the tour, either. Over the years we have had Fairfield House, Chimney Corners, Shoal Creek Residence, Brady Lane Residence, Mount Bonnell Drive Residence, Columbus Street Residence, North Tumbleweed, and the Toyath Remodel and Addition all featured. Every one of those projects was different, some larger, some smaller, some entirely new builds, some additions to homes that were already there. If there is a thread running through all of them, it is that we have always tried to use the tour to show something true about how we work, not just to put our best-looking project in front of a crowd.

Why it works

I have thought about this a lot over the years, and I think the tour succeeds because it taps into something pretty universal. Part of it is simple curiosity. Everybody wants to know what it is like to live in a beautiful, thoughtfully designed home, especially one they may never build or buy themselves. But I think there is something else going on too. A lot of people who walk through these homes are not shopping for an architect. They just want the quiet reassurance that comes from seeing how other people actually live. That the drawers stick a little. That the closets are a bit crowded. That nobody’s life is quite as tidy as it looks from the outside. Architecture, at its best, is deeply personal, and I think people sense that when they walk through someone else’s front door.

That is also just genuinely why so many people love architecture in the first place, whether or not they ever plan to build anything themselves. We all need shelter. We all have some instinct toward home, toward nesting, toward making a space that is ours. The Homes Tour taps directly into that, and I think that is why it has become what it is.

Where I will push back a little

I will be honest about something. There are years I look at the lineup and think we are leaning too hard toward homes built to impress rather than homes built to live in. Big glass boxes, dramatic pools, a lot of surface. Some of those homes are genuinely great pieces of design, and I do not begrudge them their spot. But I think the tour is at its best, and closest to what Greg and Sharon originally set out to do, when it also makes room for something more ordinary. A home somebody actually raised their kids in. A home that had to solve real problems on a real budget. Those projects do not always photograph as dramatically, but they are often the ones people remember longest, because they can actually picture themselves living there.

What it means to be on it

For an architecture firm, being selected for the Austin Homes Tour is one of the most meaningful things that can happen to a project. It is not an award, exactly, it works differently, but in a lot of ways it means more. Thousands of people buy tickets. Hundreds of visitors move through each home over the course of the weekend. It is, without question, the single best opportunity we get each year to put our work directly in front of the people who care most about it.

This year, we are honored to have one of our projects included on the tour. I will talk more about that house and why we submitted it in a follow-up post, because it deserves its own story. For now, I just wanted to share why this event means so much to me personally, and why I think it deserves the reputation it has.

Join us

The 2026 AIA Austin Homes Tour runs October 24-25. Tickets are available at Eventbrite. If you only want to visit one home, you do not need a full tour pass. You can buy a ticket for a single property, so keep an eye out for details on that closer to the date.

I hope to see you there. I never miss it, and I do not plan to start now.