Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Birch Fircrest House

The Birch Fircrest House

I had the good fortune this weekend to enjoy a tour of a remarkable work of architecture currently under construction: the Birch Fircrest House designed by Speranza Architecture + Urban Design. Philip Speranza, AIA offered the personal tour, describing the design in detail for me. The then-unbuilt project was a winner of an AIA Southwestern Oregon Design Merit Award in 2018.  

Philip is not only the founder and principal of his eponymously named firm but also a tenured professor in the School of Architecture & Environment at the University of Oregon’s College of Design. He teaches design studios in architecture and urban design, media courses in computation and data visualization, and directs the Barcelona Urban Design Summer program. According to his College of Design biography, Philip’s research “. . . explore[s] the use of new geospatial design methods to understand small-scale social and environmental phenomena in urban design. Speranza has published widely on this subject through diverse lenses including geospatial information and parametric design, [and] on-site and off-site data acquisition . . .” 

Consistent with Philip’s research, real-world data, applied across all scales, is what drives his firm’s work. For his Birch Fircrest House, this entailed a deep analysis of both the challenging site and the highly specific conditions associated with the microclimates of its wooded hillside setting. The project is effectively a proof of concept demonstrating the applicability of fine-grained environmental data to generate bespoke designs precisely tailored to the specifics of any site and program. 

The Birch Fircrest House is perched above Judkins Point along the ridgeline defining the eastern boundary of Eugene’s Fairmount neighborhood. Pre’s Rock is mere steps away on nearby Skyline Boulevard. Operating at the edges of what is possible, Philip purchased the property fully aware of its considerable challenges and tantalizing potential. Emboldened by that potential and at a pivot point in his life and career, he pursued what has become an all-consuming undertaking.  

The shadow of a tree dances on the south wall.

The realization of the project is drenched with Philip’s blood, sweat, and tears. He would not only serve as its designer but its general contractor as well. He performed much of the construction labor himself, from clearing the site, to pouring the foundations, hoisting 500-pound beams into place, and tilting up 15’ tall wall sections (don't worry, he called on friends and utilized wall jacks to help with the really heavy lifting). Keep in mind this isn’t his “day job;” his position as a tenured professor conducting important research is. Moreover, he finds time to maintain his professional practice. I find his level of commitment and energy nothing less than astonishing.  

Philip Speranza, AIA

Tilting one of the exterior walls into place.

Equally astounding is the depth of analysis and design effort Philip and his team lavished on the modest project. The commitment of time was much greater than most architects can afford on jobs many times its size.  

Philip’s program for the house was threefold: 1) provide a comfortable 3-bedroom home for himself; 2) include a possible Airbnb suite; and 3) accommodate an office for his architectural practice. Philip arrayed this program across four floors within a compact, vertically oriented, metal-clad tower.  

Plans

Section

The house responds to the challenges and opportunities presented by the site:

• The minimal footprint maximizes usable outdoor area while acknowledging rather than fighting the daunting topography.
• The attenuated volume is selectively cleaved away to generate a sculpturally interesting polyhedron that has yielded to external imperatives (such as the creation of useful outdoor spaces whose microclimate is predictable).
• The spare openings selectively and strategically exploit the variability of natural light throughout the day and the seasons as well as the availability of views, whether immediate and intimate or distant and vast.
• The irregularity of the climatic condition of the steeply sloped, east-facing site also informed the placement of the operable windows to optimize passive ventilation strategies (which include inducing a stack effect for cooling during the hottest months of the year). The double-glazed, tilt + turn, high-performance windows are manufactured by Innotech.

Taken together, these responses have ensured a customized fit, rather than a loose “off-the-rack” solution shaped by generic rules-of-thumb.  

Motorized clerestory windows will facilitate stack-effect cooling.

As part of the design effort, Philip and his team collected and visualized environmental data in detail, such as the irregular climactic conditions across the property and at different elevations above it. They took full advantage of available software tools, including Ladybug, which combines geometry in Rhino and the parametric interface of Grasshopper with open-source weather data from EnergyPlus to create climate analysis graphics and diagrams. Additionally, they conducted analyses utilizing in-situ Arduino sensors to measure temperature, humidity, light, and noise values across the lot during different seasons and times of day.  

Further availing themselves of technology, the team relied upon a laser-scanned, georeferenced point cloud to describe the site’s dramatic topography, converting the dataset to a precise Rhino/Revit file, in turn utilizing that file and computer numerical control (CNC) machining to fabricate the base for a wooden study model.  

Study model

These tools contributed toward a unique solution that accounts for small-scale environmental differences, to a level of detail that architects previously may only have intuited (with little or no empirical data or analysis to support design decisions). Once he occupies the residence and office, Philip intends to measure the success of his design by monitoring its performance and ability to adjust to environmental conditions as they change.  

The four stories of wood-framed construction demanded application of the Oregon Structural Specialty Code, rather than the Oregon Residential Code. The design’s deceptively simple form disguises heroic structural measures necessary to counter significant overturning moment forces, which are transferred directly to the basalt bedrock that underlies the site.(1)  

Construction progress photo. Note the basalt outcropping, which has been left in place as a feature within the house.

An in-floor radiant system will provide heat for the house. Interestingly, Philip explained the radiant piping will not be embedded within a concrete topping over the wooden subfloor; it turns out the rapidity of diurnal temperature swings typical here in Eugene exceed the capacity of thermal mass to absorb and release heat most effectively. Instead, the tubing will be integrated with the subflooring material. The finish flooring will be milled from the mature fir trees removed to make room for the new house.  

Philp eschewed adding projecting decks or balconies to avoid detracting from the building’s severe, faceted geometry. Instead, he made room for the at-grade spaces outside and included a large, south-facing Juliet window as an amenity for the 4th floor office.  

The Juliet window on the south wall of the 4th floor office.

I initially wondered if Philip’s reliance upon an intensely data-driven process betrayed the approach of a narrowly focused technician, rather than that of a well-rounded and holistically minded polymath. My initial interpretation of that methodology assumed a slavish dependence upon data-driven computer algorithms and the forms they generate.  

Despite the sophistication of today’s parametric tools, the level of analysis enabled by computer technology does not yet approach that which the human mind is instinctively capable of processing, nor can a limited set of relatively primitive algorithms fully account for the profundity of our interactions with the places in which we dwell. True architecture is necessarily more than the sum of discrete, albeit meticulous responses to environmental and programmatic priorities.  

The fact is Philip’s design of the Birch Fircrest House is very much comprised of gestural moves that express ideas and educe a desirably intense awareness of place and being. The house is his essential meditation on the nature of building, dwelling, and place—meaningfully deepened because Philip is both its designer and builder. Once occupied, it will transcend the methodology that contributed to the shaping of its form. It will become Philip’s home and a place for him to work. The parametric tools his team leaned on merely optimized what will fundamentally be a phenomenological work of architecture.  

*    *    *    *    *    *

With respect to architecture, Philip and I are kindred spirits. I look forward to future discussions with him about the nature of the work we do as architects and its importance, and our duty to create meaningful, useful, and enduring places.

(1)    The structural engineer for the house was Jok Ang, PE, SE of MAE Engineering.