# Kellogg: a 1970s house, rebuilt in code

One of California's great organic houses, rebuilt in code with AI as my collaborator.

A passion project by Matthew Bacon.

## The house

Some houses don't do right angles.

Shanna Kellogg designed this house in the 1970s. Her father, the organic architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, engineered its roof: two barrel vaults of laminated timber that meet at a concrete chimney. Pat McGriff spent a decade building it by hand. I've loved it since the first photograph I saw, and rebuilding it was the best way I could think of to understand it.

## The build

Every pixel of this house is drawn in code. None of it is a photograph.

The house builds itself in your browser, rib by rib and plank by plank. Nothing was scanned, traced or downloaded. Photographs of the real house were reference only, studied for proportion and light, and never shipped.

- Procedural: timber, limestone and glass, generated from numbers.
- Real light: the sun sits where it is at the house right now.
- Photoreal: the same house, path-traced in Blender overnight.
- Two versions: one for people, and a plain-text twin for machines.

It's built with three.js, with no frameworks and no build step. The page you're reading is the whole site.

## The rules

AI makes it easy to add. The craft is in what you leave out. Three rules I set myself:

1. Nothing ships that isn't made in code. No photographs, scans or stock models. If it's on screen, it was generated.
2. Silence. No audio, no video, no autoplay. A house this calm shouldn't talk.
3. The same words for people and machines. A plain-text twin, so AI agents read the same story you do.

Constraints are a brief. Without them, AI will happily give you everything, and everything is nothing.

## The process

I directed. AI did most of the typing.

1. Research. Plans, press and photographs, read and cross-checked into a dimensioned brief of the house.
2. The spec. Every room, light, interaction and rule written down before a line of code.
3. The build. AI agents working in parallel on the house, the engine, the light and the games, with me reviewing every step.
4. The bake. A photoreal version, path-traced in Blender in about four hours on a laptop.
5. The review. Every room, in every light, on every screen size, screenshotted and judged. By AI first, then by me.

The tools were new. The job wasn't: taste, decisions, and knowing when something isn't right yet. That part was still mine.

## Look closer

The best parts don't announce themselves.

Try:
- Press L to change the light
- Press W to look around the house
- Sit at the terminal and type HELP
- Type KELLOGG anywhere

Notice:
- The light follows the real time of day at the house
- One koi doesn't swim with the others
- The print by the door hangs a little off
- The card on the table has a back

There are more. Machines get the cheat sheet: [/house.md](/house.md).

## Who made this

Who made this.

I'm Matthew Bacon, a creative director with a soft spot for architecture. This house is what I make when nobody's asked.

- Email: matt@meddle.studio
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baconm/

## Credit

The house is a recreation after a 1970s residence designed by Shanna Kellogg, with its arched roof structure engineered by Kendrick Bangs Kellogg and built by Pat McGriff. A personal fan project, not affiliated with the house or its owners.

Don't forget to look up.