This paper is a study of a house designed by one of the leading postmodernist architects in America, Charles W. Moore. Moore established his reputation with striking and fanciful designs that both blend his constructions into the landscape and separate them out in astonishing ways. His designs for the Sea Ranch condominium remain among the most interesting uses of space and structure, but his conception for a single-family dwelling best personifies Moore's contributions to the direction of American architecture in the latter half of the 20th century. With the Klotz House, designed and built between 1967 and 1970 in Westerley, Rhode Island, Moore offered his own distinctively arresting answers to some of modern architecture's most intriguing questions. The Klotz House stands as a fascinating example of late 1960s postmodernist architectural thinking, yet it also exudes the timeless appeal of a classic design.
Wayne Andrews writes, "Charles Willard Moore, a native of Benton Harbor, Michigan, has staged one commanding appearance after another in California in recent years" (286). Robert A. M. Stern describes the project that first made Moore's mark in the architectural community:
[Sea Ranch was] a series of crotchety shacklike cottages akin to the indigenous architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region, yet revealing a disciplined geometry quite unlike that area's usual random character (70-71).
In the Sea Ranch project, Moore created structures that echoed the weathered barns first constructed by settlers in the area a century before. Clustered within the buildings are residences with interiors that make dramatic use of height and establish separate living spaces through the use of levels, lofts, and support beams. Stern calls the project "a significant demonstration of the urbanistic capabilities of Moore's interpretation of shack-style architecture. Sea Ranch goes beyond mere new-town housing to project a unified im...