The X House is comprised of two geometric sensibilities: one major (or determined) and one minor (or opportunistic).

The major geometry, which is plan-oriented, forms a cruciform "villa" plan whose arms have been pivoted around their crossing point. The minor geometry, which is section-oriented, inflects the ceiling surface at four discrete points.

The rotated cruciform plan establishes the house's relationship to its site (along a meadow's edge and with a view up a gentle rise planted with an apple orchard) and defines the four major program areas: living room, bedrooms, family room, and kitchen.

The ceiling is modified at specific locations to exploit small-scale circumstances in the highly determined "X" plan: more height is added in the living room, a sleeping loft emerges between the family room and a bedroom, a screened porch punctures the roof's otherwise impermeable enclosure, and a sectional "loop" creates an entry foyer that burrows through the X's crossing.

Equally weighted in the overall scheme, the major and minor geometries catalyze relationships among a series of intertwined binaries: small-large, room-site, vertical-horizontal, interior-exterior, and exploited-structured. Seeing such binaries as mutually accelerating, the X House makes the most of intersections by combining"either-or" and "both-and" to create a house of "either-both."