Property of Mr. and Mrs. Cliff May | Architect: Chris Choate

11/13/2025 10:13:00 AM

Here is a completely unconventional house, the only one of its kind, but it solves problems common to most families. It was built as an experimental house by California designer Cliff May, and it has passed the crucial test of family life. Mr. May and his wife and three young children have lived in it for a year, and found the experience exhilarating and comfortable. It has no fixed floor plan, rooms can be arranged and rearranged as easily as the living room furniture. It has a skylight that opens automatically when the weather is warm and closes when it is cold. What Mr. May originally set out to do was to build a better house at a lower cost than ever before. To cut labor costs to a minimum, he practically did away with interior partitions. The house is actually one big room (1,600 square feet), with only the kitchen and two bathrooms partitioned off. The other inside walls are 7'-high storage cabinets on rollers which can be arranged to make as many or as big rooms as are needed at any given time: for example, an extra bedroom when a new baby arrives, or one less bedroom when a son or daughter goes off to college. As shown here, the May family has divided it into three bedrooms, a dining-family room, and a big living room that opens to a concrete-paved living terrace. Natural daylighting, the other big idea in this little house, comes in through a 22' x 8' skylight in the center of the roof. Its sliding glass panels are controlled by a thermostat; they close when the temperature drops, open when it rises; and canvas skyshades can be drawn across for protection against hot mid-day sun. But California weather permits the skylight to be open much of the time. As a result, the dining-family room below it is also a kind of indoor garden where a variety of plants flourish, and the whole house is bathed in daylight, moonlight and good fresh air. The only man-made glamour touch is spotlighting in the trees that tower above the skylight; any night, you can look up and see bright light filtering down through the branches.