Although this is a small and low-cost house on a 45 by 100-foot lot, it achieves spaciousness, light, and privacy that are quite surprising. The plasticity of its form gives an almost sculptural quality.
The heart of the house is a lofty room, suffused with light and offering a variety of views of the nearby garden or the distant tree-tops and sky. Garden walls blank out any distracting nearby scenes and extend the interior space to the property line. A large old monkeypod tree not only provides front garden and patio shade, but also privacy from the street.
This simple white house is distinctly regional. In its Honolulu location, it recognizes and accepts brilliant plant colors, bright sunlight, and changing shadows as design elements (characteristic also of much of the Western mainland), and makes architecture a background to them.
Materials are simple: concrete block walls washed with white cement, an olive-gray waxed concrete floor, an olive-yellow wood ceiling, bleached wood exterior trim and doors. Tall strip windows and skylights are balanced against glass walls and doors.
The living room has a 14-foot ceiling for spaciousness. A strip skylight washes the side wall with light during the day and is softly illuminated by roof-mounted floodlights at night. The skylight is set back under roof overhang for protection from the weather.
The house was an award winner in an A.I.A.-Sunset Western Home Awards program.
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source: Sunset Books - Sunset Homes 1967
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