Four Ideal Houses occupy a different elemental volume—cube, cylinder, cone, and pyramid—and each embodies a program of habitation based on a different natural element—earth, air, fire, and water. Furthermore, the inhabitants of each House are assumed to be ‘ideal,’ in the sense that they embody, for our purposes, only certain universal human characteristics, such as physical size, capabilities of movement, a perception of their environment, and interaction with it. The site of each of the four Houses will also be ideal, meaning sloped or flat, horizontal or vertical, and will disregard any inherently idiosyncratic features. In the design of each House, equal emphasis will be placed on the interior and exterior of its volume. In taking this approach, we realize that these ideal types exist only as ideas, yet find these ideas useful in the laboratory of the design studio as a means of understanding the fundamental tectonic elements of architecture.