141 Fairlawn Dr, Berkeley, CA 94708

Description

Set into the North Berkeley hills, 141 Fairlawn is one of the earliest known works of architect Andrew Batey. It was designed and built in the early 1970s, years before the Napa Valley houses and Getty Center recognition that would define Batey's career. It was commissioned by Henry Bowles, an architectural photographer who trained under Morley Baer and shot for Condé Nast, and it shows in a studied style that prized "purity, simplicity, and austerity of form" — for someone who looked at buildings for a living. More than fifty years on, it still feels ahead of its time. Step inside and the house does the thing Batey built it to do — it brings the outside in. A two-story wall of glass on an exposed frame pulls the canopy straight into the living space, and the main volume rises double-height beneath open beams, an open-tread stair climbing to the mezzanine. There is very little between you and the outdoors, and the room changes hour by hour as light and leaf-shadow move across it. Sliding doors carry the space outward: one opens onto the entry walk, a step from an expansive deck set among mature native oaks. A floor above, a second slider opens on the same wall, looking down over the quiet sitting area by the entrance. Batey worked the sloping site rather than fighting it, and the plan unfolds in levels — an updated kitchen with quartz counters and custom tile and a light-filled main floor. The main level holds a private bedroom that opens directly to a full bath — a primary suite, with a second door as its own private entrance — along with a flexible den in the far corner. Upstairs, a 400+ square foot master suite where the bedroom opens to the black-tile bath Batey returned to design in the late 1980s, lit from two skylights overhead. Beside the single-car garage sits a separate studio of roughly 300 square feet with its own sink and full bath, built as Bowles's darkroom, later given a skylight of its own — a palette for the imagination: studio, office, guest space, retreat. Redwood construction, a low-maintenance Trex deck, replacement windows on the lower level, central heat, EV charging, and a roughly 220-square-foot detached garage ground the architecture in easy livability. Home Energy Score: 5. Across the decades the house has kept its clarity: simplicity, open living, an unbroken connection to the landscape, and a quiet intelligence in every room. It is a rare thing — an architect's early vision, preserved, and exactly the way we want to live today