Houston House and Home - Index

Houston House and Home - houstonhouseandhome - Index

40
house& home | February 2009 | house andhomeonline.com
The modern lofts use design principles
seen in 19th-century Southern
shotgun houses built long and narrow
with rooms and doors lined up to
catch prevailing breezes. The style was
called “shotgun” because, the legend
goes, a shotgun theoretically could be
fired front door to back door without
the pellets hitting any obstacle. The
design is similar to the Southern
dogtrot house, which had an open
breezeway down the middle to keep
rooms cool.
“We focus on regionally specific
architecture,” says Heidi Eagleton,
AIA, lead designer of the Butterfly
Lofts and president of Open Design &
Development (The ODD Group), a
design/build architecture firm with
offices in Houston and Seattle. Known
for its environmentally friendly contemporary
loft and single-family
homes, The ODD Group aims to
build homes that are carbon neutral by
using both active and passive greenbuilding
strategies.
“We try and learn from Houston’s
vernacular buildings — or those built
before electricity and air conditioning
were developed — and use that understanding
for design and construction
LEFT: Doors by the living room fireplace
can be tossed open for fresh air from the
screened porch. Above the indoor/outdoor
fireplace is the owners’ collection of
animal masks from the Embera people of
Panama. The flower arrangement in the
bowl is by Aubrey Sellers Florist. TOP: The
central stairway’s cut-out walls frame views
and allow light and air into the stairway.