Location: Lakeville, Connecticut
Year: 1969-1971

Project Brochure [PDF]

House III is the third in a series of investigatory house projects that have searched for the nature of the form-meaning relationship in architecture. Upon entering “his house,” the owner is an intruder attempting to regain possession and consequently destroying, albeit in a positive sense, the initial unity and completeness of the architectural structure itself. The interior “void” of the structure seems to act as both background and foil, as a conscious stimulant for the activity of the owner. It is not so much the completeness of the formal structure as presented by the architect as it is the environment’s absence of traditional meaning that triggers this sense of exclusion, which then works dialectically to stimulate the owner to a new kind of participation in the house. Choosing finishes, adding walls, placing furniture, and installing lighting are no longer concerned with the purpose of fitting some preconceived idea of good taste or completing some “set piece” scheme of either the owner or the architect. By acting in response to a given structure, the owner is now almost working against this process. By working to come to terms with the system, design is not decoration but rather a process of inquiry into our own latent capacity to understand any man-made space.