ORO Editions

House on a Pond

Dallas, Texas, USA, 2000

Max Levy, architect photos Charles Davis Smith next page

Visible pathways, water falling to a pool, overflowing to embankment cascades, the path from sky to pond complete.

Conveyance diagram

Gando Teacher's Houses, in a Burkina Faso village without running water, fan out in a wide arc. Vaulted roofs drain to channels at the top of bearing walls. The runnels flow along the walls, turning to dramatic sloped, open downchannels that connect to an exposed in-ground network. Combined, they visibly relay how water is being gathered and directed to storage cisterns. When dry, the channels still serve as a sculptural element while bearing witness to the promise of rains yet to come. During the rainy season, the rainwater is collected on both ends of the houses, fed to multiple water tanks and used primarily for agriculture (Lepik + Beygo 2019; Divsare 2013).

House on a Pond has a simple gable roof. Each plane drains to a detached curved-profile 4 in (10 cm) deep outrigger gutter, which in turn leads to a central cross-gutter connected to a gang of four metal down-pipes. These empty to a circular collecting pool on the open breezeway rain terrace that serves as entrance. The gap between gutter and roof edge lets residents watch the process begin. The pool overflows down cascading concrete runnels, along the embankment stair to the quarry pond (Baum 2003). Architect Levy (2012) explains: "In this way, the house is connected to that site in a much more profound way than if the house simply enjoyed a view. The house... becomes an intermediary between the sky and the pond. The house gives its share of rain back to the pond."