CLEAR THINKING 04/03/08

Words  ::  Will Jones  // Images  :: Mike Osborne, Joseph Pettyjohn, Ryan Michael

If ten people were to try and picture a house that was inspired by Moorish, Asian and Japanese design and built by an architect from Belgium in the heart of Texas, the chances are they would come up with ten very different images, most of them pretty awful. Thankfully, the Annie Residence by Bercy Chen Studio takes light reference from each genre and gently imposes it on an architectural aesthetic that owes a lot to Mies van der Rohe, creating a house suffused with an ordered tranquility.
Thomas Bercy came to the US from Belgium in 1995 to attend the University of Texas School of Architecture. There he met his partner, Calvin Chen. When Bercy’s brother, Yannick, arrived two years later, the trio decided to buy a lot and build a home that would effectively contain the separate lives of the two siblings while allowing everyone to live ”together.”
The home sits on a narrow 50-by-150-foot infill lot in Bouldin Creek, a bohemian enclave close to the centre of Austin. It is split into two pavilions, one single-storey and one double. The single-storey pavilion, inhabited by Yannick and his family, includes two bedrooms and a bathroom. The two-storey pavilion has a ground floor devoted to communal common areas – a living room, kitchen and dining room – while upstairs is Thomas’ bedroom, a spare room, a bathroom and an outdoor roof deck. At the centre of each pavilion is an “operational core.” As Bercy explains, “In the vein of Louis Kahn’s separation of served and service spaces, we have enclosed certain areas. Blue or red translucent acrylic panels clad a steel frame and contain all the ‘service’ areas of the house, such as bathrooms, kitchen, utilities and storage.”
The acrylic panels are lit from behind to give each building a glowing heart. Solid walls and ceilings are clad in birch plywood panels. Internal spaces are relatively devoid of furniture, but not empty. Their cleanness of line and acknowledgement of space are reminiscent of minimalist Japanese architecture, without going so far that the space stops being a home and become a shrine to design.
In all, the square footage of the buildings adds up to just 2,000 square feet. However, thanks to Bercy Chen’s guiding principle of transparency and the creation of intimate outdoor space, they feel far more spacious. Chen explains: “In a residential world increasingly dominated by the alienating forces of TV and computers, we were interested in emphasizing connection over separation in our home. The relative transparency of the house makes it a wonderful, well-supervised playground for children. And, in case you want some privacy, track-mounted curtains can be drawn to completely close off many spaces in the pavilions.”
Each volume is pushed to the outside edge of the lot, and the walls facing the street are closed, creating inward-looking pavilions in a courtyard style. The two parts of the house are staggered to create a deck area in the front as well as a more private outdoor living area to the rear. In the space between is a central water garden with a transparent glass bridge, mirroring the facades of the house. “The reflecting pool becomes the focal point, and all sides of the house open onto it,” says Chen. “The body of water and the spatial continuity between inside and outside was inspired by Asian architecture.”
The structural design of the property was devised with the dual targets of economy and energy/environmental efficiency in mind. Modular steel frames, infilled with structural steel panels, are the main building elements. “The steel frame went up in two weeks,” says Bercy. “The infill panels were installed in less than a week, and the glazing took just two more weeks to install. Sustainable principles are incorporated throughout. The modular-steel framed design to standard sizes allowed for efficiency and economy in both material usage and labour.” The steel frames are infilled with Thermasteel, structural panels made of galvanized steel and a special resin that provides a vapor barrier and the exceptionally high insulation rating of r-29. The glass panels are double-glazed, insulated, tinted and have a Low?E coating. Because of the hot Texan sun and the expanses of glass used, this high degree of insulation was crucial. The house is a certified City of Austin Green Building Project. It scored three out of a possible five stars; construction costs were kept to below US$150 per square foot.
The resulting metal and glass building could have taken on a stark industrial aesthetic, but Bercy Chen has softened the design. Vines, oleanders and other plants bring nature into the composition while shielding the home from neighbors and passersby. Brazilian hardwoods, with their warming hues, are present as cladding to areas not glazed and in a trellis-like sunshade. The roof space is covered with a retractable canvas awning, which helps detract from the intense linearity of the structures below, creating the outdoor spaces – ideal for plants and alfresco dining –common in the Moorish architecture of Spain and North Africa. 
“The house was an experiment in building with non-traditional materials,” says Bercy. “The three of us spent many hours building and testing full-scale prototypes in order to refine our designs.”
On completion, the trio named the house “Annie” – not in homage to the Broadway musical, nor after the architect’s mother, but simply because Annie is the name of the street on which it sits. That’s quite clear – as is this glass house inspired by global architectural ideals.

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