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The Irish countryside is divided into parcels of land called townlands. This house is situated in the townland of Killan and is built on a hill on the client's farm. It is square in plan, and the footprint is approximately 12m x 12m.

The house at Killan departs from the rigorous order and symmetry of its neo-classical precedents and is organized for habitual domestic life.

The project is largely unembellished; this is as much to do with a strict budget as any aesthetic economy. The outward form of the building, though square in plan, offers four differing figurative elevations. The eccentric location of the chimney ensures that the pyramidal roof alters the character of each elevation. A massive douglas fir timber box gutter is propped along its length by vertical fins at regular centers. At the north-east corner, these timbers form a portico.  To the south elevation, the eaves are extended out by 1.1m from the wall, to shade the south elevation and shelter the main patio.

The major visual axis through the building are maintained, but here and there, the walls are pulled or pushed off-axis to form the necessary rooms or to create a recess or alcove for a door or bench.

The ground floor rooms are relatively open to each other, arranged around a central double-height hall. A 450mm step in section across the main east-west axis separates the upper from lower quarters. Large oak doors close off the rooms if desired.

The kitchen space is opened up to the south view by a long panoramic opening spanned by a 9.5 x 1.5m concrete beam. Pre-cast concrete floor panels bearing on the walls or cast beams carry the upper floors. The walls are plastered in an off-white colored sand cement floated finish and are left unpainted. Oak joinery and flooring bring some warmth to the masonry.

Robust concrete benches and walls are set out around the house to enclose the stepped or ramped areas of the paths. The chimney is a narrow horizontal slot alluding to a pillbox bunker overlooking the terrain. It is the "strong center" of the house. The landscaping and construction of the outbuildings will continue in the coming years as the budget allows.

The house exhibits a deliberate awkwardness of form, which seeks to thwart aesthetic convention in so far as preconceived concepts of good taste, beauty, style, etc., continually return us to the same forms and structures. The work exhibits robust and deliberate legibility, where the house is considered to be a "psychic fortress" with a strong, protected center (the hearth) that offers a way out to the inhabitants, away from external interferences and anxieties. This intention translates into the built form as an overlaying of fields of brightness, temperature, air-movement, resonance, viewing angle, so that these things might be experienced more directly.