HONOR AWARD / CUSTOM URBAN HOUSE
A PARALLEL ARCHITECTURE | WATER’S EDGE RESIDENCE | AUSTIN, TEXAS
"“When you walk through this house—even if you don’t notice it—you sense that everything is just lasered in and so tight,” says Eric Barth, AIA. Indeed, there’s a feeling of calm the house inspires just by looking at it. Such is the effect of exacting precision and deft proportioning. You might expect no less from a firm that calls itself “A Parallel Architecture,” but on this lakeside project for a mathematician and his family, tolerances were even tighter.
“Every stone and brick in the house was located in our drawings,” says Eric. “That doesn’t happen on all our projects but, for a mathematician, it was important. The fun thing was that at every meeting he would throw us a mathematically based curveball. We were constantly looking for opportunities to infuse math-based logic into the house. All the siding is binary, spelling out hidden messages. There are a lot of Easter eggs hidden in the house—some he’s found, some he hasn’t.”"
