Natural Affinity

As the VISION House Austin takes shape, the design team reveals an ‘enlightened’ perspective on the human-nature interface.

To really understand a site, you need to listen,” notes Alan Barley, co-owner of Barley|Pfeiffer Architecture in Austin, Texas. He and Peter Pfeiffer are well-known for their decades-long commitment to sustainability and climate-resilient design. “We look for places where the land can work for us and where it could work against us,” Barley adds.

The idea of considering nature above all else stems from Age of Enlightenment philosophers such as Francis Bacon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that humans should study nature to investigate it and harmonize with it. Rousseau promoted the virtues of a simpler life lived closer to nature. It’s no accident that Pfeiffer and team make a big deal about this “preconstruction” phase of our latest Green Builder VISION House partnership.

Today, architects and builders can take lessons from those 17th and 18th century philosophers about how understanding nature can inform design. Building a sustainable home that stands up to the increasingly extreme weather conditions in Austin—or anywhere else, for that matter—requires much more than a quick infusion of extra insulation and some energy efficient appliances. Studying the landscape provides a foundation for a design that can prevent solar heat gain, which in turn means less reliance on mechanical solutions to cope with high temperatures.

“Everything we do is site specific in terms of design, even when we build a spec home,” says Pfeiffer. “It’s fundamental to the way we design to respond to the site and to feel the breezes to decide things such as which way the windows should face and the placement of various rooms.”

Pfeiffer and Barley take that philosophy to new levels at the VISION House Austin, built in partnership with Green Builder Media for homeowners Robert and Judi George. The Georges chose to build their custom home on a two-acre site adjacent to their current home because of their deep appreciation for their Hill Country neighborhood outside Austin. “From this location we can see five or six miles of views of rolling hills,” says Robert. “The new site has an even better view because there are fewer trees obstructing the vista.”

The Georges’ goals for their house are to improve their ability to age in place with a low maintenance, highly resilient, net zero energy sustainable home. To achieve that goal, Barley and Pfeiffer started as they always do: by walking the empty land to listen to nature.

Architectural Philosophy Leads to Resilient Design

For Enlightenment philosophers, the pursuit of empirical knowledge included the study of nature and the way flora and fauna adapt to their surroundings.

“When we approach a piece of property, we focus on listening to the site, to feel and see for ourselves the natural existing topography, where the sun comes up and sets, the views from different parts of the land, which way the breezes blow, the types of trees that thrive there and even the pattern of wildlife pathways through it,” Barley says. 

Pfeiffer’s and Barley’s approach not only echoes Enlightenment empirical nature studies, but it also relies on the historical context of how people built sustainable, livable houses in the Texas heat long before electricity and air conditioning existed.

“We’re taking our cue from people who built their own houses when they moved into this region in the 1800s,” Barley says. “They knew how to site the house and they knew that they needed to have a windbreak from winds coming from the Northwest. They knew to separate their kitchen from the main house because they realized that cooking heated up the house.”

At that time, people built “dog run style” houses with the kitchen and living areas on either side of a breezeway to allow fresh air to flow, Barley says. They also needed to look for water because they grew their own food and kept animals on their property.

“Studying animals and their behavior on a site can be useful, because animals naturally gravitate to places that feel safe and comfortable,” Barley says. “Each site is a microcosm of habitats for all sorts of creatures, and you can learn from that.”

The architects’ goal is to solve problems for their clients and help them realize their vision, not the vision of Barley and Pfeiffer. “You have the needs of the site and the needs of the client,” Barley says. “You need to listen to the site – it will tell you where it wants to have a house put on it. We listen to what those two entities say and figure out the best way they can go together.”

Barley and Pfieffer design homes organically for each site. “If the clients don’t have any particular ideas about design, then we begin to take cues from the site and the region,” Pfeiffer says. “We look for ideas that will give more connectivity and meaning to the site.”

VISION House Austin is being designed relative to what parts of the home are being used when, to compensate for elements such as high summer temperature or cooling area breezes. Credit: Sergio Flores

For instance, on a flat rocky site, they might design a house that could hug closer to the ground and use materials related to the site such as limestone, Barley says.

“We concentrate on melding the clients’ dreams with the climate and the setting,” Pfeiffer says. “We place a priority on climate-responsive design.”

Combining climate-responsive and client-responsive design means, for example, listening when a client says they want to wake up to sunlight, Barley says. That means placing the primary bedroom on the east side of the house.

“When a client says they like to sit outside in the shade, that tells us where we need to think about placing outdoor living space,” he says. “This is how we figure out where each piece of the puzzle needs to be placed.”

Listening to the VISION House Austin Site

At the VISION House Austin, Pfeiffer and Barley paid close attention to breezes and sun patterns that could passively cool the house.

“This was one of these sites that confused you because if you look at a map you would expect the breezes to be coming through from the Gulf of Mexico,” Pfeiffer says. “But because of the topography, the breezes came up the hill more. That’s responding to the microclimate—the specific factors of that specific site that might catch you by surprise.”

Barley|Pfeiffer Architecture designs homes environmentally tailored to each site, taking cues from the site and the region. Courtesy Barley|Pfeiffer Architecture

The breezes that flow along the south ridge of the Austin site helped Pfeiffer and Barley decide to design a screened-in porch on the southeast corner of the house.

“When we laid out the house, we responded to the fact that the afternoon sun is just a killer here—it was 100 degrees in May—so you need to think about shading that glass,” Pfeiffer says. “Before you do that, you need to think about what spaces you’ll occupy during the day. In this location, we wanted the common spaces that will be used most on the southeastern and eastern side of the house. It’s not just a matter of shading the glass, it’s also placing certain rooms in the house so they’re not being blasted by the hot sun.”

Rooms that are less likely to be used in the afternoon, such as the guest bedroom and bathroom, are on the opposite side of the house.

Architects Peter L. Pfeiffer (left) and Alan K. Barley (right) discuss sustainability plans for a new house with owners Judi and Robert George (center). Credit: Sergio Flores

“We designed the house with the shorter sides on the east and west to limit the physical exposure on the west—the less exposure you have to the sun, the less the house gets heated by the western afternoon sun,” Barley says. “We maximized the northern exposure to reflect the sun and for less solar heat gain, then shaded the south side.”

The best views from this house are to the north, which also made it easier to orient rooms in that direction. In addition, functional rooms that don’t need a view, such as garages and carports, can be sited on the side of the house that doesn’t have a view.

“The thing that a lot of builders get wrong is that they focus on capturing a view, which sometimes ends up with a lot of western exposure,” Barley says. “Then they have to compensate for all that additional heat building up with larger air conditioning systems.”

As the Enlightenment philosophers knew, humans can learn a lot from nature through careful contemplation and thoughtful responses.