"The Josses were a young lawyer and his wife who wer just starting out and had little money. Their requests were simple: a two bedroom, two bathroom house that was open to the views and preserved as many of the existing maples as possible. Costs were not to exceed $5300. Mrs Joss had also admired the small wooden Norwegian pavillion she had seen at the San Francisco Treasure Island Exposition the previous year, and requested something compatible in warmth and character.

Belluschi placed the house just below the crest of the hill well back and up from the road below, and gave it an 'L' shped plan that opened to a view of the Tualatin valley to the south-west and the snow capped Cascade Range to the north-east. Exteriors were of unpainted rough spruce, clapboarded horizontally to reinforce the low lying horizontality of the forms. The Joss house had interiors all of natural wood with smoothly sanded cedar walls, ceilings of hemlock, floors of random width oak. Mrs Joss' request for a Norwegian character notwithstanding, the Japanese influence was apparent throughout. While picking up cues from Wright's Usonian Houses, which had just been published as a special feature in the Architectural Forum, Belluschi turrned even more specifically to the work of the Czechoslovakian architect Antonin Raymond, then working in Japan, whose book 'Architectural Details' he had acquired in March 1939 shortly before beginning the Joss design. It provided him specific models for the flush siding, verandah and most especially the concrete fireplace." [Clausen 1994 : 104-5]