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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Carrie and Kevin Burke's home sits behind a high hedge, far back from the street here in the historic district of this university town. You can easily drive by and never even notice it.
And that's the way they wanted it -- to blend in, fade away, be unobtrusive. It's a modern structure subtly situated between, and a bit behind, two rambling Victorian mansions.
But like many architects, the Burkes enjoy a surprise or two in their buildings. And the 2,000-square-foot home, designed by Carrie Burke and built in 1999, does not disappoint in the "Ah!" category.
It's a giant sundial.
On the first day of spring, Carrie, 48, was making coffee and talking about the spot of sun that had already worked its way down the living room's white west wall and was momentarily sitting on the edge of the room's floor. (It's filtered through an oculus that hangs just below the skylight in the roof.)
"You'll be surprised how fast it moves," she says. She's right. Before the first cup of coffee was consumed, the light shifted, at high noon warming the cross that's etched in the center of the living room's concrete floor. By 1 p.m., it has moved across the floor, ready to make its afternoon crawl up the east wall, a journey that will be an hour earlier with the advent of daylight-saving time on Sunday.
Burke has long been fascinated with light and how it plays on things, be it the wall of her home or a piece of Japanese pottery. Light, and its mysteries, was the focus of her graduate work at Yale. It was long her dream to design a home where light played a leading role.
She likes to say she's more interested in buildings that "create an experience" than buildings that "get in the way."
The Burke home does not get in the way. It's spare, and the furniture is on wheels so it can be moved wherever the family might need it. (They constantly move the grand piano to keep it out of the sun, which bounces around the room with the seasons.)
Burke admits the project was a challenge because the house had to be sited perfectly to catch the correct angle of the sun. The surveyor "started griping right away" when she told him exactly where the south-facing house needed to sit on the lot.
"But then he really got into it," she says.
From her loft office high above the living room, she can watch her house come alive with the day. (There are times when she has to pull down the shades on the south-facing windows to control the sun pouring in.)
"You notice the different positions. How it shifts day to day," she says. She's also happy that her daughter, Ava, 13, is growing up "in an instrument that is filled with a natural element."
Burke says the house, which took nine months to build, and its moving sun "puts everything in perspective. ... I like to wonder who's going to be living here in 100 years, watching the sun move."
Her husband, Kevin, 47, thinks the sundial effect even slows down time, rather than speeds it up.
"It makes me think in quarters," he says, "not years."
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