Moore House

A se­cond house based on an even more ex­ten­sive set of geo­me­tries was built for me in 1961 in Or­inda. It in­clu­des two ae­di­cu­las of dif­fe­rent sizes, for­med by large woo­den co­lumns pla­ced to hold up a sym­metri­cal roof over a square plan, though the sym­me­try of the openings lies abut a dia­go­nal axis, so that pat­terns are over­laid. There is yet ano­ther pat­tern here, of lay­ers of im­plied in­si­den­ess (from the shel­ves to the shower in one of the ae­di­cu­las), to en­hance the dia­gram­ma­tic qua­lity of the dwel­ling wi­thout lo­sing the ap­pa­rent ea­si­ness that goes with the lo­ca­tion of this little square house on a round mea­dow in a grove of oaks. Here every de­ci­sion, from the purchase of the large co­lumns be­fore there was even a de­sign for the house, to lea­ving off any cor­ner sup­ports which would have so­li­di­fied the square plan, was taken to press for a kind of toy gran­deur, as would befit a (very) small great house (Charles Moore in Wood­bridge 1988: 254-56, 267, 287-91).