MODERN BARN
Newly minted architect helps parents realize dream among the bungalows
The two-story, brick home that Catherine and Chris Viviano bought in the Upper Kirby district was meant to be temporary, a place they’d live just long enough to design its replacement.
Living in the 1930s-era teardown would give them a sense of the site’s life while their son, architect Michael Viviano, devised a plan for a new, modern home they would build on the same lot.
One day, though, Catherine was cooking dinner, and she felt water dripping on her head.
“We were not really prepared to move out when we did, but the house literally started falling down around us,” Catherine Viviano said, now laughing about that day. “We just needed to move out. It moved the process up by about a year.”
They leased a 1,100-square-foot bungalow around the corner while they dreamed up their new home.
Through hours of conversations, the Vivianos discussed what they did and didn’t want.
Sketches were drawn and scrapped and drawn all over again.
In the end, Chris and Catherine Viviano got the home they wanted: a modern barn filled with a mix of contemporary furniture and family heirlooms.
And Michael Viviano got even more: the launch of a career.
EVOLUTION TO ARCHITECTURE
Catherine earned a degree in interior design from the University of Texas in 1981 while her high school sweetheart, Chris, studied finance there.
They returned to Houston after graduating, and Chris sold real estate before settling in the mortgage lending industry.
Catherine raised their two sons, Michael and Stephen, using her creative skills in volunteer work along the way. As they moved from home to home — from traditional suburban homes to a historic space in Southampton to a three-story transitional townhouse — she tackled substantial remodeling projects with each. That experience ultimately helped her start her own business as a contractor.
After college, Michael, now 33, considered law school but settled on a master’s degree in architecture instead. His younger brother, Stephen, 30, went to medical school and now is in New York for his residency in plastic surgery.
Michael worked at Logan and Johnson — Jason Logan and Matthew Johnson were two of his University of Houston architecture professors — after graduating. Then his parents approached him about designing a home for them.
“My mentors basically said I’d be an idiot not to do it. They said, ‘You cannot turn it down if you have even a passing interest in home design,’ ” Michael Viviano said.
He’s more confident now, but he’s honest about the anxiety of taking that first big step. His parents wouldn’t be ordinary clients he’d walk away from when the job was done. He also realized his inexperience, noting that his first architecture project would be “like drinking from a firehose.”
Chris and Catherine, however, knew their son would not fail.
GOING MODERN
A long, slender dwelling, the Vivianos’ home is covered in concrete brick and larch tongue-in-groove cladding. The lower half has dramatic, floor-to-ceiling windows on the front and one side, providing a view to a simply landscaped yard with a fence row of sweetgum trees boasting their orange-red winter colors.
Catherine holds a thin concrete rectangle and explains the lower level’s exterior. She wanted gray brick, but even after an exhaustive nationwide search, she couldn’t find what she wanted.
They found the concrete pieces and had them cut into narrower slices — a task that proved more costly than the brick itself. Larch wood, similar to cedar, covers the second floor.
“I wanted it to be ‘friendly’ to the neighborhood and age and not always be the shiny penny on the corner,” Michael said of his hope the wood-and-concrete exterior would become more beautiful over time.
He wasn’t worried about the wood, but those concrete pieces were another story, so they called back the masonry crew to add a mortar smear to help it age as gray rather than tan.
All combined, the 4,100-square-foot house is clean and tight; in an accounting of materials, they hit the balance just right.
Inside, the living-dining spaces are separated by a partial wall that extends 8 feet up and is covered in the same brick used on the home’s exterior, except that it’s painted white.
The unfussy living room has a deep navy sectional sofa flanked by two off-white chairs, all resting on a gray rug that softens the concrete floors.
In the dining room, a clever cantilevered buffet has cubbies for dishes and a barely noticeable drawer to hold linens. A white oak table surrounded by modern Poltrona Frau black leather chairs gets a lot of use, as a mixture of good food and great conversation keep the tight-knit family there for hours, even at weeknight dinners.
Catherine insisted on plenty of room in the kitchen so she can work un-interrrupted on one side of the island while guests sit around it to chat. Tough-as-nails soapstone covers the island and perimeter counters.
Outdoors in the backyard sits their pride and joy: a pizza oven. On pizza night, the kitchen island might be covered in ingredients, rolled-out dough, piles of cheese, meat and vegetables.
Upstairs has a similar, visually quiet design, with plenty of drawers and shelves in his-and-hers closets, avoiding the need for a lot of furniture in the bedroom space. It’s all clean and white, with shaded windows allowing just as much light as they want.
The couple’s style has always been a mix of traditional furnishings with antiques, but they say it wasn’t hard to let go of rooms full of furnishings and accessories.
Sure, their attic holds antiques and favorite pieces that might rotate into rooms once in a while, but an estate sale got rid of a lot of furniture they wouldn’t need anymore.
“You spend one half of your life wanting, wanting, wanting and the second half of your life saying, ‘No, I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want.’ At this stage of my life, I don’t need a room that’s not going to be used. There’s no point having a space I consider a walkby,” Catherine said.
A NEW PARTNERSHIP
A mixture of Michael’s design skills, Catherine’s contractor know-how and Chris’ regular reminders about money and resale value, the new Viviano home is something they’ve all had a hand in.
There were times they drove each other crazy arguing about placement of steppingstones or the details of window trim, but the mother-son duo finished the project on the same wavelength — they even finish each other’s sentences.
“I had to get this past my clients, my parents, knowing I was never going off on my merry way and escape the project. Anything that I would draw, anything … if the steps didn’t match everyone’s gait … I would never hear the end of it,” Michael joked.
Mother and son now are business partners in their new Viviano Viviano design-build firm, which allows Catherine to branch out to bigger projects and provides Michael with a structure for his architecture skills.
Not only did he discover that residential design is his strength, he found confidence as an interior designer, helping his parents select new, modern furniture for every room.
Both work from the home, and when Michael’s partner, Ryan Johnson, finishes his workday, he almost always ends up at the Vivianos’, where they make dinner and talk about their day.
“We are a ridiculously close family,” Chris chuckles with more than a little pride.