Finding inspiration in the work of Tadao Ando, a Houston couple designs the concrete house of their dreams.

“Concrete has always had a mystical hold on architects,” says designer Christopher Robertson. Visionaries such as Le Corbusier, who used concrete in many of his 75 projects, loved this basic material. Robertson and his wife, Vivi Nguyen-Robertson, his partner at Robertson Design, were also enamored with the amalgam of sand, gravel, cement, and water and the newlyweds dreamed of using it for their own house. “We just couldn’t wrap our heads around the cost,” Christopher says, referring to the labor-intensive poured-in-place procedure he prefers.

The Robertsons’ new 2,900-square-foot house is a wooden box that sits on top of a concrete box, with a concrete wall wrapping around it. Inside, the boxiness vanishes and the house resolves into two complementary halves.On one side, a long chute consisting of an interior courtyard, a dining room, Vivi’s office, and the kitchen and living spaces stretches from front to back. On the other side, a white central staircase leads to a split-level landing the Robertsons call “the reading room’’.

The living space had to embrace many functions, including the comings and goings of a dog and trike-riding children whose favorite route includes the deck beyond the living room. The choice of concrete was a practical decision as well as an aesthetic one—it can take a lot of abuse.

The living space had to embrace many functions, including the comings and goings of a dog and trike-riding children whose favorite route includes the deck beyond the living room. The choice of concrete was a practical decision as well as an aesthetic one—it can take a lot of abuse.

Robertsons also opted for other durable materials, such as Siberian larch for the ceilings and Austrian white oak for the floors. They deliberately left the wood in its raw state to allow for natural aging, which includes exposing flaws, now and in the future. “If we scratch or stain the floor,” notes Vivi, “we just sand it.” Imperfection is a driving force in this house, it turns out. “Concrete is uncontrollable,” Christopher notes—a fact he was already well aware of. “You can’t guarantee the results.”

“The concrete walls will only get prettier—the imperfections are like a watercolor,” Vivi says. The Japanese have a name for it:wabi-sabi, an aesthetic that accepts transience and the blemishes that impermanence brings.

“It’s a live material and you have to live with the imperfections. They add so much.”

Source: http://www.dwell.com