Suzanne McFayden’s newest home in Austin reflects both sanctuary and statement. The Jamaican-born writer, philanthropist, and contemporary art collector calls it her “third act,” a space designed for reflection after her youngest child graduated from college this past spring. “I’ve been a daughter and student, a wife and mother,” she says. “Now, I’m ready for change. This is my third act,” she says, reveling in the possibilities. “I’m excited to see what happens next.”
A home shaped by absence and presence
McFayden sold her 7,000-square-foot Brutalist concrete house, once highlighted in Architectural Digest, to find something more intimate. She sought “something cozy and nourishing,” she says, “with wall space for art.” She found her “sleeping beauty” tucked into a verdant thicket of Red Oak and Live Oak trees in Austin’s Hill Country. The project reunited her with local architect Paul Lamb and New York City–based interior designer Jennifer Vaughn Miller, the team behind her previous industrial residence.
Related: Newlyweds Wesley and Kuckenburg Deck Downtown Apartment
Lamb, quoting Louis Kahn, says the room is “the beginning of architecture.” The design here moves away from a single, imposing structure. Instead, it creates a series of spaces, each with its own story. McFayden’s minimalist approach blends with carefully selected art and objects that reflect her passions and honor her ambitions. “It wasn’t until I went to Art Basel in 2010 that art became personal,” she says. “I saw myself represented—unlike what I learned in art survey courses at Cornell, where the art was so external to all I am.”
The collection she and Lamb assembled tells her story. In the foyer—or the “Hall of Ancestors,” as Lamb calls it—Frida Orupabo’s Woman Flying II / Birdy seems to levitate above a Senegalese tribal chair and a vintage Noguchi light sculpture. Vaughn Miller kept the design simple, using natural greens, ivory-colored custom rugs, and shearling pillows to let the art stand out. “The idea was to bring the outdoors in, creating a calming canvas with colors authentic to the setting,” she says.
Art as the architect of space
Some pieces determined the layout. A colossal Ebony G. Patterson diptych anchors McFayden’s upstairs study, where a vintage Gio Ponti desk is positioned diagonally from the entrance, with the seat angled to face Paul Anthony Smith’s A Sense of Familiar, installed above a Pierre Augustin Rose sofa. The Haas Brothers’ Wooly Nelson chair, which straddles the divide between functional seating and contemporary sculpture, adds warmth and whimsy. The powder room evokes a sultry underground disco, with a vintage brass, nickel, and glass orb casting moody light on Carrie Mae Weems’s Portrait of a Woman Fallen from Grace and Simon Haas’s voyeuristic Padam Padam from his celebrated glory-hole Grottos series.
Related: Focus Estate Fund hires Nhood for Polish leasing
McFayden’s desire for “a wall that represents Black joy” comes to life in the media room. Lamb designed a seamless, black-on-black ceramic structure sealed with brown mortar—an installation that feels alive. “The room is the beginning of architecture,” he says, echoing Kahn’s philosophy. “True design happens from the inside out.”
The house, like its owner, defies simple labels. It balances strength and softness, calm and boldness. Art doesn’t just decorate the walls—it shapes the atmosphere.
