"A small house, but big in scale: its few parts are large and its form is simple and symmetrical. Although its form is bold, it is recessive in its color and in its shingle-texture. The house was designed to look ordinary at first glance, but to be extraordinary at second glance and over time. Basic here is the sense of this building as an object, tall and wooden, sitting among the trees in its lush semi-rural site.

"The entry level is devoted to practical spaces—a small hall which doubles as a dining area, a kitchen, a bedroom , and a bath arranged to serve both the bedroom and the more public spaces. A stair, wider at the bottom, rises against one wall of the house, turning at the top to open to an extraordinary major living space above. This space really is the house. It is at once grand and intimate, formal and relaxed. Three walls have large windows covered with Venetian blinds, and the fourth, the stair wall, is dominated by a large hearth behind which the stairs rise and descend. The fireplace structure echoes the shape of the house."

— from Stephen Prokopoff. Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown: A Generation of Architecture. p24.

"The house stands in a small wood. The sections seem to show a gabled roof but in reality, the roof is a steep pyramid that projects far over the facade on all sides of the house. The high living room is located in the middle of the house; a gallerylike library under the pyramid looks down into the living room.

"The windows of the main facade, all of different sizes, are dominated by a big bull's eye that breaks boldly through the interior spaces and into the roof volume to light the library."

— Stanislaus von Moos. Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown: Buildings and Projects. p266.

The Creator's Words

"Housing is good, but houses are bad. This has been a maxim of Modern architecture. While it is true that concentrating on individual houses is socially irresponsible and technologically irrelevant, given the continuing housing crisis and the circumstances of practice for the individual architect, the little house should not be scorned. It is still the first job for most architects, for obvious economic and social reasons. Architecture is an expensive medium; therefore, conservative clients award big commissions to old architects or big firms. (Ironically, big responsibilities often go to young planners and young architects in big firms.) The little house for a close friend or relative is usually therefore a first opportunity for the young architect to test theories and expand them...."

— obert Venturi. from Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas. p160.