TIMEPIECE RESIDENCE + STUDIO
“Yesterday I visited a house in Charlottesville that is in many ways a synthesis of elementary and transcendental geometries with astronomy, specifically solar observation and time-keeping—a house that is simultaneously a camera, an ‘objective’ lens, an observatory and a clock … Although the geometry of the house is very accurately calculated, the air felt like an incalculable flux, as positive and negative ions danced—the mental image that I carried away with me was not static, it was cinematic.”
- David Turnbull, Professor of Architecture, critic and writer


PARABOLA's live/work studio is nestled amongst historic Victorian homes in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. Over the past 25 years, we have self-developed this site as an evolving embodiment of our architectural philosophy—an exploration of built form generated by the ethereal materials of light and air.

Timepiece is a finely-tuned setting for lived experience, with program elements oriented to site-specific diurnal and seasonal cycles of daylight. Through calibrated alignments that mark the solar hours and extremes of the solstices, a dynamic relationship is formed between the building and the sunlight moving through it.

The design confirms architecture’s potential to be a tunable instrument that forges deep connections to nature. Time itself is a natural cycle, which is then organized to fit a human construct and codified in our clocks and calendars. Timepiece reveals the harmony and discord between natural and human experiences of time and allows for moments of sublimity in the everyday.




DATA

CLIENT
Carrie Meinberg Burke & Kevin Burke
USE
Residence, Office
SIZE
2,000 sf
LOCATION
38.03º N latitude -78.08º W longitude Charlottesville, VA
BUILT
1999


CREDITS

ARCHITECT
Carrie Meinberg Burke, AIA
Kevin Burke, AIA
LEAD DESIGNER AND CONTRACTOR
Carrie Meinberg Burke, AIA

STRUCTURAL DESIGN
W. David Winitzky, AIA
MECHANICAL
Staengl Engineering
PARABOLA Architecture
LANDSCAPE
Fred McGann
PARABOLA Architecture

BUILDER
Noah Yoder with Steve, Tim, and Anthony Yoder


AWARDS

2004
Graham Foundation Grant

2003
Certificate of Merit for Excellence in Architecture, AIA Virginia

1996
AIA Virginia: Award of Honor for Site Analysis / Synthesis


PHOTOGRAPHY

Prakash Patel Photography
Kevin Burke Photography



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