We’ve all heard the slogan, “Keep Austin Weird.” Perhaps the weirdest thing about Austin over the last few years is the boom in housing sales over $1 million—usually such prosperity is reserved for the country’s perimeter cities. The other unusual aspect of this bustling residential real estate market is that at least 20 percent of it is modern in style.
Where are these buyers coming from? Technology, medical, and financial industries are largely responsible for keeping unemployment near the lowest in the nation and salaries bustling at the high end. And they are fed by a constant influx of youthful workers, drawn by Austin’s culture and music scenes, beautiful landscape, and year-round outdoor lifestyle.
Home prices and home sales finished 2016 at the highest ever on record in Austin. Lots of wealthy buyers and a tight supply of housing has meant a strong demand for the talents of the local residential pros, many of whom derive from the excellent architecture school at the University of Texas at Austin.
Just two years ago, a young entrepreneurial builder named Richard White drove by an interesting teardown opportunity in South Austin, a neighborhood still relatively undervalued (at the time) but just a few minutes across the Colorado River from downtown. What attracted him were its commodious lot dimensions and the hilly topography of the area. Instead of the typical 40 or 50 feet of street frontage, this lot had 70 feet and still offered 100 or so feet of depth. After 12 years of building both custom and speculative housing, he understood immediately that the extra elbow room could result in a satisfying, compelling, and therefore highly marketable new house.
That last point is important. Even though Richard fully intended to buy and develop this lot as his own family house, he knew there would come a time—probably sooner rather than later—when he would want to make his profit and move on to the next project. Because, after all, that’s what his business, Abode Modern Home Building, does. The other essential characteristic of Abode is that it prefers to build architect designed houses, whether on behalf of a custom client or at its own behest for speculative projects. “I don’t take a custom home on unless there’s an architect involved,” says Richard. “I need the support.”
Richard has other support as well. He works alongside his father, Richard senior, who is a second-generation Austin builder and a trained engineer. After a brief notion he might become a dentist, Richard felt the inevitable draw to the family profession. Oh, and handily, there’s a Realtor in the family, too.
Richard has worked with quite a few of Austin’s talented residential architects, including Dick Clark, FAIA, Michael Hsu, AIA, and Kevin Alter. When it came time to design his own house, he reached out to Bercy Chen, a design-led design/build firm. “Because we’re also builders and developers, other builders understand we know how design efficiently and cooperate collaboratively,” says Thomas Bercy.
From Russia With Love
Thomas met partner Calvin Chen in architecture school at the UT and discovered they shared a multicultural upbringing and an abiding interest in connecting the dots of art, architecture, and other regional cultural traditions. Thomas grew up in Belgium and worked in Chile, and Calvin was born in Taipei and moved to Australia with his family. As they’ve grown since forming the company in 2001, they’ve tended to add employees with diverse backgrounds, an eye to building an international practice. Indeed, the influences fueling their architecture are decidedly global. Although neither Bercy nor Chen is licensed, they employ architects on staff.
When Thomas and project designer Viraj Mehta (an Austin native of Indian heritage) began working on Richard’s family house, they looked in part at the cultural traditions of Mexico, where Richard’s wife, Patricia, a graphic designer, was born. Specifically, they boned up on midcentury Mexican architecture of 1950s and ’60s.
And, in a typical Bercy Chen mashup, they also delved into the philosophies of Russian polymath El Lissitzky, an interesting figure whose wide-ranging work influenced Bauhaus, book design, typography, architecture, and much more. He apprenticed with artist Kazimir Malevich, which shows in both of their oeuvres. They were leaders in the art movement known as Suprematism, characterized by manipulations of geometry and a limited palette of colors.
What emerged from these varied ingredients was the inspiration for Tetra House, as the project became known. Tetra means four in ancient Greek, and describes the intersecting quadrilateral shapes Thomas and Viraj devised to contain Richard’s four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath, 2,800-square-foot program.
“The project,” says Thomas, “is very Cartesian. We pride ourselves on pulling together different elements that create an interesting narrative. We don’t have a common style that spans periods. We like to explore a language and then move on. Keeping mind, of course, what is appropriate for the client, the site, and the project.”
Playing With Blocks
In plan, the main house is somewhat T-shaped on the first level and, because of one of those projecting quadrilateral shapes, or boxes, it’s L-shaped on the second level. It holds three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, an open kitchen-dining room, a family room, and a playroom. The longer axis for both floors runs roughly north-south.
At the front of the house, a carport is tucked under that projecting box, and a casita is positioned just to the east of it. It contains a bedroom, a full bath, and some extra storage. The casita’s location assures privacy for the main house and controlled, largely internal views for the first level. Between the two buildings is an elevated courtyard that steps down to a swimming pool.
Because the program is stretched out among these intersecting building blocks, the house reads bigger than it is. Thomas and Viraj rotated the entire plan a few degrees on site to capture skyline views of the city for the second floor and to further shield the house from passersby. “Rotating the footprint to a 30-degree angle makes the house much more dynamic, and the views are great. In Austin, the topography starts rising as you move away from the river, Thomas explains.
Like Lissitsky’s work, the palette is pared down to just a few strong elements: concrete, wood, and glass. Board-formed concrete walls on the first floor give the appearance of a plinth for the floating wooden boxes above. “There’s an integral color in the concrete that came out a kind of taupe color—almost like rammed earth,” notes Viraj.
“We’re interested in the heaviness, the massiveness of masonry bearing walls,” says Thomas. “And we like to contrast them with lightness. The concrete base came from the influence of Mexican modernist bases.” The glass and cedar boxes above provide that lighter effect, which the team enhanced in several ways.
“The wood used to form the concrete was repurposed for the siding above,” says Viraj, to give it an instant weathered character. And then, says Thomas, Richard’s crew applied a sealer that also oxidizes and silvers the tongue-and-groove boards. The earthy colors resemble the indigenous Texas soils, while the glass cools their sunbaked visage.
See Change
The geometry of the boxes creates a compelling interplay at street level, but what isn’t obvious are a series of raised clerestory flat roofs at selected perimeters that manipulate perception both outside and inside the house.
From the outside of the house, they emphasize vertical planes, making them appear taller than the bulk of the roof structure really is. Inside, they abut the glass walls, giving the impression of soaring height throughout the interiors, even though most ceilings are just 9 feet high. LED strip uplighting along these raised ceiling planes, or clerestories as Thomas and Viraj call them, adds to the effect.
The dance of vertical and horizontal elements continues inside. The horizontal swipes of the board-formed-concrete walls contrast with the vertical grain of the walnut custom built-ins and the oak flooring. All is carefully choreographed.
But for Richard and his team, the glazing was the biggest challenge. “The windows are beautiful. They are the key to the house,” he says. “But we built them on site, piece by piece. So instead of taking two days to install like conventional windows, they took two months. Still, we don’t really have to turn lights on in the house in the daytime, there’s so much natural light.”
Figuring out the connections for the few pieces of steel in the house was also tricky. Everyone on the project would have liked to use more steel, but it wasn’t in the budget. Instead, they used it as an accent here and there, working in tandem with the windows to make more of less. Elsewhere, says Thomas, “the majority is shear walls and LVL, Glulam.”
“We try to place the money where we get the best value out of it,” says Richard. “And to explore how far we can take things to keep it safe but still adventurous.”
A number of choices and solutions happened on site, which is an improvisation Richard enjoys. “If we had been doing a custom home for a client, any substantial change might have taken two weeks of drawings and meetings. But here, I could have a 20-minute chat with Thomas and get it worked out.”
Moving On
So, the house is finally finished. Richard and Patricia’s art collection adorns the walls, and their midcentury furniture brings the rest of the interiors to life. So, it must be time to relax and enjoy the place, right?
Nope. Richard drove by another interesting lot recently, and the siren call of the next project has begun its irresistible tune. Tetra House has now hit the market, and made it onto some local modern home tours for extra exposure. It’s time to move on. Richard can’t rest on laurels; he hungers for a new challenge. And he especially thrives on these houses he does for himself and his family. They bring a different kind of energy and satisfaction than the custom work does. “I enjoy being the curator of these houses,” he says. “I can take the time to live in them, feel them out, get them just right. When you hand over a custom house, there’s always the feeling that you’re leaving the last 5 percent undone.”
When he drives the project for himself, he concludes, “I can take care of that, and make a more interesting house, because I can take on more risk than a client would. I can take the risk, and then they can walk in and enjoy the result.”
Plans
Project Credits
TETRA HOUSE, AUSTIN, TEXAS
DESIGNERS: Thomas Bercy and Viraj Mehta, Bercy Chen Studio, Austin, Texas
BUILDER: Richard White, Abode Modern Home Building, Austin
PROJECT SIZE: 2,800 square feet
SITE SIZE: .165 Acres
CONSTRUCTION COST: Withheld
PHOTOGRAPHY: Paul Bardagiy Photography
Key Products
RANGE: Wolf
REFRIGERATOR: Sub-Zero
COUNTERS: Silestone
SINKS/FAUCETS: Kohler, Brizio,
Hansgrohe
LIGHTING: Flos
TILE: Heath Ceramics, Fireclay Tile
PAINT: Sherwin-Williams