Love It or Loathe It : Berkeley Architect’s Design a Sea Change in Housing
You don’t need directions to the house that Eugene Tsui built.
You can’t miss it.
White, globular and looking a bit like a sea creature on steroids, it’s a stark contrast to the pleasant, boxy little homes sharing the street.
But there’s more to this dwelling than a funky facade. It’s designed to withstand earthquakes, fires, floods, even that terror that goes crunch in the night--termites.
“There are a lot of sensibilities in the design of this house,” said Tsui. There are a lot of sensibilities outside the house, too, some evinced by neighbors taken aback by the unorthodox dwelling.
Despite opposition, Tsui got the go-ahead for his house from city officials--but only, he says, after a months-long campaign to convince them “the house was not just a gimmick to shock people, that there was actually some substance behind the way it looked.”
Love it or loathe it, there’s no ignoring Tsui’s house.
On a recent afternoon, a class of schoolchildren fascinated by the futuristic house were standing in what will one day be the front yard while their teachers made a date for an official tour.
Less thrilled were a middle-aged couple who climbed from their car for a closer look and gazed at the structure with expressions of fixed interest.
But the personable Tsui has a way of overcoming critics. He often invites them to take a closer look, displaying the house’s hidden charms with an enthusiasm that can be infectious.
Luckily, his clients--his parents--weren’t such a tough sell.
“They were very matter-of-fact about it,” he said.
Tsui started out with a fairly simple list of requests--no stairs, plenty of storage, earthquake-safe, low-maintenance, airy.
From there, he drew on nature for his inspiration, reasoning that natural forms are best able to withstand natural forces. He focused on the tardigrade, a tiny water animal famous for its virtually indestructible elliptical form.
The result is a house that bears more than a passing resemblance to its marine antecedent.
The centerpiece is a cylindrical living room lined by built-in seating. Overlooking the room is a 16-foot acrylic window that fills the south wall. Above, an 8-foot round acrylic skylight lets in more light. The home is called “Ojo del Sol”--eye of the sun.
A spiral ramp to the second floor circles the living room, winding around the steel cables lacing the built-in sofa to the roof, part of a number of earthquake-resistant reinforcements.
Other safety features include a system of drains in the foundation to siphon water in case of flood, a ring of water jets to douse the walls in case of fire and a reinforced foundation designed to resist earthquakes and termites. There’s even an avant garde garden. A sunken patio in back is shaded by two “limbs” that tie the back of the house to the foundation. Small vegetable plots beside the house are at eye level to someone on the patio.
Having a round house means never having to jab your head on a sharp corner. Even the kitchen cabinets are curved.
But there are also some unique design challenges. Tiles in the bathroom have to be applied a strip at a time. Tsui went through four plasterers before finding two artists willing and able to complete the arduous job.
Tsui’s budget for the 2,000-square-foot home was $250,000, enough for a mansion in some parts of the country, but not excessive for a middle-class home in the San Francisco Bay area.
Although Tsui remembers it as a 9-month effort for approval, city zoning officer Vivian Kahn said opposition to the house was not particularly stiff and no one appealed the board’s decision.
A public hearing was held, but Berkeley’s unique permit process requires such a hearing before any single-family house is built.
Officials tend to stick to regulating height, bulk and use of the structure rather than pure design aesthetics, she said.
“Berkeley is generally a very tolerant city when it comes to First Amendment-type issues of exercising personal opinion,” she said.
With completion just weeks away, Tsui hopes to eventually win over even his harshest critics.
“Any new object, any new structure that’s built usually generates a lot of hostility at the beginning,” he said.
Over time, though, people become used to the idea and eventually even begin to identify it as “their” landmark. “We think people will actually become proud of it,” he said.
The 40-year-old architect is not without his fans.
Professor Richard Meier believes his former student is 25 years ahead of his time. He, like Tsui, predicts the house eventually will make the transition from arguing point to conversation piece.
“You have to have something to gossip about,” Meier said.
