Nothing about the two-story house is symmetrical. It's huge, but it's not set very far back from the street. Dark brown shingles cover all of it, a natural skin enclosing the building, which seems to grow out of the earth. He's thrown off his European antecedents. Using native materials, he's created something completely new.
Any element is secondary to the overall effect.
It's a stretched skin over a volumetric treatment of space. This is the moment that makes the walk with Cormier a discovery rather than a stroll. Cormier explains that Richardson uses elemental forms, the cube and the cylinder, to enclose space. He respects the surface continuity. And Philip Johnson uses the same elements.