ABSTRACT
The Fahmy House appears at once to be derived from an exceptionally wide gable and a simple linear shed building. Designed for a site that is so exceedingly steep and populated by native oak trees as to be almost impossible to develop, the primary goal was to minimize the environmental impact of new construction while integrating interior and exterior spaces with a coherent form. The house, both in plan and section, conforms to the topography, avoids disturbing the root-protection zones of the trees and stays under a strict height limitation. At the beginning of the design process, in accordance with rules imposed by the town of Los Gatos, California, an arborist was hired to produce a tree inventory and to rate all of the trees from good to poor condition. The root zones of the trees were projected onto a three-dimensional computer model of the topography.
