"After seeing the O'Neill Hay Barn, painter Ron Davis commissioned Gehry to work with him on a design for a house. Gehry and Davis share an interest in manipulating perceptions of perspective, a major focus of Davis' paintings. Working together on Davis' site in malibu, they staked out vanishing points for perspective illusions, which estabished the rhomboidal perimeter of the house. In addition, the shaping was a response to the site - 'a large hockey stick shape' beside a lake - ... .
As the design and project scope evolved, the original interest in perspective and perception continued and the distorted trapezoidal plan developed. In the final design, the roof is tilted from a height of 30 feet in one corner to 10 feet at the corner diagonally opposite. Window openings ... contribute to the perspective illusions created by the walls and roof."
Ron Davis House is then an occasion to develop a new architectonical language, starting from an analysis of perspective's possibilities. All the elements of the house, in fact, are manipulated, distorted and used in order to continuously remind to the observer the subtle and ironic game within reality and perception.
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