141 Fairlawn Dr, Berkeley, CA 94708

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....