Future-Proofing a Home Where Water Is a Focus and a Thread

The Moore/Andersson Compound in Austin, Texas (1984–87). Photo courtesy Kevin Keim.

To safeguard Charles Moore and Arthur Andersson’s Austin compound against extreme weather, a caretaker looks to the best of its design.

During the February 2021 Texas deep freeze known as Snovid, the Moore/Andersson Compound in Austin was fine—if having a decimated garden and needing to blast the pipes with a hairdryer in the middle of the night can be considered fine. “I went and rescued several friends whose power went out, who were freezing in their homes,” says Kevin Keim, the hands-on director of the Charles Moore Foundation, a nonprofit that owns and takes care of several buildings by Moore, the architect, who died in 1993.

Two winters later, the compound, which Moore designed in 1987 with business partner Arthur Andersson, and which is widely considered to be a postmodern masterpiece, wasn’t so lucky. “During one of the freezes, the pool pump froze and burst, and all the basin water drained into the Gulf of Mexico,” Keim recalls.

Gazing at the empty rectangle, he saw an opportunity.