"The Burns House was designed for an urban planner...and he brought at least two specific requirements to it. The building should reflect the patterns and traditions of life in southern California, and it also had to house a fine baroque pipe organ of which the client is the fortunate owner.

"The result is a series of sheds and towers, not unlike Charles Moore's work some ten years earlier at the Sea Ranch, but here clothed in more regionally apposite stucco in many shades of ochre, orange, and mauve. The house is on the side of a steeply sloping canyon built on a platform that is barely 75 feet (23 meters) square. On the uphill side is the entrance; on the downhill side...the house opens to a terrace with a swimming pool and a view. Inside is a special room for the organ which can be closed off from the rest of the house with...sliding wooden doors...."

— Gerald Allen. Charles Moore. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1980. NA737.M65A84. p89.