The house is a fairly simple, T-shaped organization of interior spaces, arranged to form an entry court at the back of the house and a partially contained living deck on the view side of the house facing northwest, where the summer sun sets behind the Olympic mountain range. The house is primarily one big slightly twisted continuous room, with defined functional areas oriented according to favorable relationships to the sun and views.

Surrounding trees accentuate the inward focus of the gently dished slope, so that the house appears to sit in a distinct trough, following the fall line of the hill. The roof of the house bends into a shallow "V" paralleling the cross-slope dish of the hillside. At the same time, the longitudinal axis of the roof folds downward to follow the hill, slumping into a comfortable resting position on the earth, not statically resisting its position, but flowing into the implied motion of the site.

The roof is the most important element of this house-a warm cedar cloud weighing in on the interior, defining a space between the sloping land and the heavy sky. This is a very characteristic Northwest experience: living on a hillside under a heavy sky, light poking in horizontally at sunrise and sunset, creating spectacular moments at the horizon, reflecting richly off the ceiling of clouds. Sometimes during the day a hole opens up and the light pours in from the middle of the sky. This roof works in the same way, with its central dormer angling toward the southeastern sky, bringing light over its shoulder, deep into the house.