This home was designed for a gated community in Hillsborough, NC where local covenants require homes to be of no less than 5000 square feet. Although in keeping with this wasteful rule, the design attempts to be as environmentally conscious as possible. The form of the house is excavated from a very simple shape, thereby reducing the surface area-to-volume ratio as much as possible. Instead of rambling, the home is comprised of three stacked floor plates, the lowest of which is settled into the slope and sheltered by the earth, further reducing the amount of surface and giving an impression from the street of a much smaller home.

Of the various design principles at work in this house one of the most noticeable is the ‘here and there’ factor; where from almost any part of the house there is a view to another. These diagonal connections throughout the house enliven the simple orthogonally configured space.