The site of this house, which architect Robert Skinner designed for his young family of four, was a problem lot on a hillside. It had a fine canyon view, superb oak and sycamore trees and measured 80 feet by 140 feet. But the only level area on it was too small for the 1,800-square-foot (or larger) house stipulated in the Beverly Hills building restrictions. Such a situa- tion is often, unfortunately, resolved by bulldozing into the hill, leaving enough ground for a house but no trees, contour or character. Determined to keep the natural environment, Mr. Skinner built the main portion on the existing level area, up among the trees. By scooping out some sloping ground at the front of the lot he was able to extend the house forward and face it with a handsome two-story studio and entrance stair hall. This gave the whole house a total of 1,950 square feet and gave Mr. Skinner a studio-office at street level, secluded and with its own entrance.

In planning the rooms, Mr. Skinner created three distinct areas as you can see on the plan. You enter the front door at street level, get a glimpse into the studio if you look to the right under the gallery, and go up the glass-walled stairway. On the level is the central living-dining room which is the heart of family activities and entertaining. On the north side of the house, son Jeffry, 72, and daughter Karen, 6. have a wing all their own. Mr. and Mrs. Skinner's bed-sitting room is a quiet zone, at the east end.

In the living-dining room the Skinners created a conversation center around the brick fireplace by dropping the floor two steps and building a long, low cabinet to house hi fi and records. The carpeted steps are wonderfully convenient to sit on during parties or when friends come for dinner and conversation. (Mr. S. says he prefers "a step and an elbow" to a chair.) The windows of the dining area slide open to the south terraces which double the size of this long room and are used constantly for family fun and entertaining.

Mr. and Mrs. Skinner's own bedroom is also a sitting room and was planned accordingly. Two long storage walls (they total almost 21 feet in length) and a 15-foot counter cabinet with drawers and cupboards hold all personal belongings. TV is built into one of the closets for comfortable viewing from bed. The rear wall opens to a private bedroom terrace half roofed, half open, and the adjoining bathroom has its own small patio just outside the glass walled shower. The children's domain, right, is a separate wing only a few steps away. It includes Karen's and Jeffry's rooms, divided by a book and storage wall, their skylighted bathroom, and an indoor play area. Sliding shoji can close off their rooms completely or open them to make one big 20-foot by 20- foot playroom. The glass wall of the whole wing slides open so the children can romp in and out. Outside there is a brick and concrete paved play terrace with a sand pit: the children's own garden is around the corner. The kitchen also opens to the play terrace, making it easy for Mrs. Skinner to supervise the children's wing.

The whole house is marked by exceptional harmony due to the fine order of its design and to the fact that all the rooms like all members of the family are on equal terms. Materials and details are the same in every room: Ceilings are fir boarding; walls are redwood paneling and plaster; the floors of every room except kitchen and bathrooms are carpeted. Mr. Skinner feels that this "oneness" of the house clearly affects the family spirit. The design requires orderliness of everyone and everyone responds by "living-up" to the house. He says of the children, "picking up is a ritual, done without question. Personal pride in their environment has been achieved. We are all a better family now in terms of mutual understanding and cooperation."

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source: House and Garden Magazine | May 1960

The secret heart of the house is the garden court, a sheltered contrast to the outside terrace by the water's edge. The privacy of the court is guarded on all sides, partly by a wall, partly by the house itself. Yet the glass doors, the patterned concrete floor and the planting help to create an open, rather than boxed-in, look. With radiant heating the courtyard can be used much of the year in the mid-California climate. Behind glass wall at left is master bedroom; behind the one at far end, the living room. The textured wall in between, like the outside walls of the house, is horizontal redwood boarding, stained black, with battens at three-foot intervals.

Indoor and outdoor space is inter- woven in a fashion that makes use of every inch of the site, as you can see by the plan below. It provides privacy where essential, openness where it is most desirable. Every room in the house has direct access to outdoors. Yet not a single window looks out on the street from which you can see only the solid walls of the garage and the end of the boys' bedroom wing. A long covered walk. leads from an off-street parking area to the front door. On one side of hall that divides house are study, living room and dining-kitchen, all with glass walls facing the lagoon. On other side are the bedrooms, all looking out on the court.

Indoor seclusion is to be found in the study with its corner hearth. In spite of the glass wall and door leading to one end of the terrace, there is comparative privacy from the goings-on outdoors, because of the solid wall of the living room that projects forward at the front of the house. At other end of study is a whole wall of storage.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | August 1959

Spaciousness is an attribute of the plan, though it includes only 1,600 square feet. If the opaque sliding doors between the rooms and the glass doors of the corner porches are all pushed back completely, the interior is practically one room bordered by glass walls. Bathroom and kitchen, back to back for economical installation of equipment, are, of course, separate. In daily family life, bedrooms are closed off for privacy, the hearth and living rooms are joined. On a winter night the hearth room may be completely enclosed for snugness. Many combinations of rooms are possible. Storage walls 4' deep give generous storage; in the master bedroom the storage wall includes a lavatory.

Flexibility of the interior hinges on the hearth room. When the house is opened up in this way, more than 40 people have enjoyed a buffet or cocktail party there without being crowded. And with only the boys' bedroom closed off, the parents have entertained 20 friends without waking the children. Cork floors and insulated ceilings keep noise under control. The fireplace hood is removable and may be adjusted up and down to control air flow over flames. Colored ceramic tile paves hearth area and four skylights light it.

Variety of views is offered from porches at each corner of the house. The living room and its porch, opposite page below, seem to become part of the surrounding woodland as well as of each other when the glass doors are pushed into the wall recess. Additional areas for outdoor living are the brick terrace under the house and terrace near kitchen for barbecues.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | August 1959

Can a house be lighthearted? Certainly this one is. Indoors and out it is as exuberant as the weekend living for which it was planned. The living room, round as a carousel, has a parasol-shaped roof. The dining room walls slide wide open on two sides. The circular kitchen wraps around a cosy hearth. These are enchanting features. They are a constant joy to Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Knox, who own the house, and fun for their guests, too.

Part of the pleasure of the house is due, naturally, to its seaside setting. It overlooks Sagaponack Pond near Bridgehampton. New York, and commands. panoramic views of lush green meadows and blue waters stretching away to the ocean. (The Knoxes can go to the beach by boat from the foot of their land.) But there is equal pleasure in the fresh form of the house itself. The round living room pavilion rising airily to its fanciful roof is a continual delight and surprise, especially at night when the glass walls are lighted and crowned by the gleaming dome. And the curious wedge shape of the house gives the living and dining rooms the widest possible views seaward, yet you can also look back into a quiet, enclosed courtyard for a change of scene. In its freedom of form, in its circular rooms and sculptured roof, the little house illustrates the new trend away from the austerity of rigid, box-like shelters.

Planned for vacations and weekends in the spring and summer and fall, the house is no architectural folie. The 1.800 square feet of space includes only four rooms and they were expertly planned for easy maintenance. The Knoxes saw to that because they do the maintaining themselves. The round kitchen is as efficient and step saving as a ship's galley. The dining room, also spare and uncluttered as a cabin on shipboard, has hard-wearing fir floors like the outside decks that flank it. Entertaining is easy because the dining room can be merged with the adjoining outdoor areas and the pass- through to the kitchen helps everyone to help himself. For overnight or weekend guests there is a compact but separate one room house with its own cabinet-kitchen, bathroom and outdoor terrace. You can see it directly below, to the right of the main house-it faces the waters of Sagaponack Pond.

On a sunny summer weekend the house unfolds. The 8'-wide sliding glass walls of the dining room are pushed back and it merges with the south deck, the shore beyond it, the white pebbled courtyard. (The sliding screens can keep out insects.) For large or small parties this is perfect. At lunch Mrs. Knox places the food at the kitchen pass-through back of the dining table and guests pick up plates and sit on cushions on the deck, steps or loggia. The deck rail itself is a long bench. At night, dinners are usually buffet and small tables are placed in the enclosed courtyard or on the deck. With the house lighted up the effect is entrancing. Conversation or dancing in the round living room often follows dinner. When the Knoxes are alone on a chilly spring or fall weekend they can eat snugly beside the Franklin stove in the kitchen and their bedroom doubles as a sitting room. An ingenious sliding door can divide the dressing alcove from the bedroom, providing individual privacy, and there is also a second bathroom. The cypress board walls and roof of this wing are fully insulated and central heating was recently added.

Round shape of the kitchen is clearly defined by its solid enclosure of vertical cypress boards which contrast with the glass walls of the round living room. The pass-through, directly next to the range, insures hot food at dinner and becomes a service bar for food or drinks at parties. When closed, its doors match the board wall. Triangular dining room is like a breezeway when sliding glass sash is opened. Route to front door is at left, to bedroom, right.

Kitchen work counter is as efficient as a soda fountain. Wall refrigerator, sink, burners, oven are just a few steps apart. The kitchen itself, white, with birch cabinets, gray vinyl floor, is not many feet away from the bedroom, dining and living rooms or the outdoor areas. Next to the cheerful Franklin stove, the alcove where the Knoxes breakfast looks seaward through adjoining window. Kitchen has an ample pantry, a lavatory nearby.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | July 1959

Here is a house of only 1,613 square feet which gives you four bedrooms, two baths, a 33'-long living-dining room and a family room-kitchen as large as 21' x 17'-all exceptionally well related to each other. 

Instead of wasting land on a front lawn to dazzle the neighbors, the architects placed carport and garage close to the street, leaving space behind them for a courtyard. Since it has a high fence and a gate controlled by push button from the kitchen, small children can play there safely without running into the street. The court makes a handsome outdoor living area and it has another inestimable virtue: it separates the living and sleeping wings of the house, giving seclusion to each. The key location of the kitchen is a prize asset. A young mother is really in control of the whole house there, indoors and out. Rear terrace, front door, entrance court, family room and dining room are only a step or two from the kitchen. The house is also simple to maintain. All ceilings are stained, tongue-and-groove redwood boarding. Inside walls are stained Philippine mahogany and outside walls are stained fir plywood. So repainting every few years is unnecessary. Flooring in all rooms is resilient vinyl asbestos, comfortable underfoot and readily mopped. In the concrete slab beneath it, radiant heating coils give clean, even warmth automatically. Altogether this is a house that can stand up to children's hard use. But nowhere, inside or out, has attractive appearance been sacrificed.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | June 1959

Like many young couples when they buy a house, Charlott and David Wyatt found that it pays to do one thing well and do it at the outset. Mrs. Wyatt loves to cook and enter- tain and her ambition was to have a light, cheerful kitchen where she, her husband and guests could be comfortable while the rest of the house went through its growing pains. So it made sense to concentrate the bulk of the immediate budget in that one room. Costs were kept under control by Mrs. Wyatt's unfeminine strategy of making up her mind first as to what she wanted and sticking to it. And she was completely realistic about both her space and her requirements. "I fooled around, pen in hand," she says, "until the kitchen I wanted came through." Then she worked closely with architect Robert McCracken and RCA Whirlpool to achieve a personal, practical kitchen that has everything on her list: a big, smooth, unobstructed counter; a pivotal work area where she can swing from oven to counter, refrigerator to sink; an island with chairs where people can sit and talk to her without being in the way; and, of course, good equipment. Her requirements in that realm: the carefree qualities of both a dishwasher and a disposer, a combination wall refrigerator-freezer (she was willing to wait until the model she liked was available), two wall ovens, one electric and one gas (to give her the advantages of both types of cooking heat and be independent of possible power failure), an electric cooking top, a washer- dryer and as much compact, easy- to-reach storage as the kitchen could comfortably accommodate.

Pink is Mrs. Wyatt's favorite color and the kitchen, she says, "was the only room where I felt I could use it without upsetting my husband." That the effect is crisp, not sugarplum, is due to the fact that Carnation Pink countertops, floor, shutters and chair cushions are relieved by lots of white in cabinets, curtains, and brick wallpaper, and by the burnished metal hardware. According to Mrs. Wyatt, Chicago gets no award for being dirt-free, so she chose easy-to-clean Robbins vinyl floor tile, laminated plastic countertops. Storage is designed for her 5′ 5′′ height. Cabinets over island hold glasses, seasonings. Pots, pans and dishes are by the cooking top. Especially valuable: a storage wall of stacked cabinets in alternating pink and white with adjustable shelves for good china and silver serving pieces. 

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source: House and Garden Magazine | June 1959