As a freshly minted Rhode School of Design-trained architect in the late 1950s, Americo “Rico” Mallozzi’s first break in the business occurred in 1961, and it was all because of family.

His wife’s brother, the late Louise D’Iorio, and his wife, Irene D’Iorio, hired him to design and take charge of building them a house in Johnston at 2 Valley View Drive.

“My brother-in-law drove up to this lot, and there was nothing on it. He asked me to create something,” Mallozzi says. “It was incredible for me, a young architect. I had a complete blank canvas to work with. I was given a sandbox in need of a sand castle.”

Mallozzi, who is a professor emeritus at Roger Williams University’s School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation, had just completed a cross-country trip visiting homes built by such legends as Frank Lloyd Wright.

House by RISD architect, with master woodworker’s kitchen, is House of the Week

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“I also had developed a fascination with the newly built ultra-modern homes in Palo Alto [Calif],” he adds.

He pulled together all of his research from his travels and planned a four-bedroom modern-style house with an Oriental feel. He included several elements that back then were “unheard of” and today have become timeless and classic.

These elements included bunched tall thin windows, seamless and hidden gutters, board-and-batten siding (made out of Brazalian redwood) and an open interior.

He readily admits that 2 Valley View Dr., which is for sale for $349,900, is “like a first love. I put everything I knew into it.”

Brenda D’Iorio-Holder is overseeing the sale of her late parents’ house, which offers 2,600 square feet of living space. She grew up in the house, andsays “I love that my father and my uncle were the ones who put it together.”

Her favorite room, she adds, is the kitchen, which was designed by a master woodworker and RISD classmate of Mallozzi, the late Tage P. Frid. Frid, a former RISD professor and author of the three-volume Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking, “took a page from the Japanese when creating the cooking-and-eating area,” adds Mallozzi.

It’s a teak-and-walnut masterpiece of custom-made wood counters and cabinets with sliding wood doors. The room lacks dividing walls and economizes space, and the cabinets have been left open at the top.

“He [Frid] wanted the room to be part of the community of the house,” Mallozzi says. “He used all natural oils. This explains why it looks fresh today.”

The kitchen and L-shaped living room/dining room really one giant room. There’s a vaulted ceiling and windows all around.

The fireplace looks like it’s free-floating with a flat stucco hood that slants at the top to match the line of the ceiling. Mallozzi designed the fireplace’s exterior with a mix of traditional smooth-edged bricks and popular-in-the-1920s clinker bricks –– typically discarded because of discoloration, jagged edges and distortion but rediscovered by Craftsmen architects, who used them as detailing. (The bricks’ name refers to the sound they make when they land in a discard pile.) An exterior wall at the front entrance has a similarly textured wall of regular and clinker bricks.

In the dining room is a picture window the size of sliding-glass doors. The plan was to have a wraparound deck, but the D’Iorios never completed it.

Mallozzi’s futuristic design called for all of the heating elements to be recessed into the walls. The electrical outlets are set on their side on top of the baseboard, and he placed them about a yard apart.

He also maximized the space in the two full bathrooms upstairs by putting the windows on top of the mirrors. There are built-in vanities, tile floors and showers.

The windows in each of the bedrooms were planned to maximize a cross breeze, although the house does have central air conditioning. The doors for each of the four bedrooms are floor-to-ceiling, and each room has a closet with built-ins. The laundry area is on the bedroom side of the house.

The bottom level has doors that open to the backyard with a bricked-in patio. There’s a family room with a working fireplace, full bathroom and additional storage on that level.

“It’s an eclectic house,” Mallozzi says. “I stole from many styles.”

The splayed gable roof resembles the pagoda-style roofs that are common in Japan. There are oversized overhangs and hidden downspouts. Between the garage and the house is a giant skylight, and there’s an overhang over the front stoop and the path leading from the garage to the front door.

“I wanted to maximize how much sunlight came into the house,” Mallozzi explains. “At the same time I wanted [the family] protected from rain and snow when walking from the garage to the house.”

The oversized garage, big enough for 2.5 cars, has walk-in storage and lacks any interior floor-to-ceiling columns. . “I left it open so you could put in an in-law apartment or an office,” Mallozzi says.

The house at 2 Valley View Dr., Johnston, on one-half acre of land, is for sale for $349,900. It has 2,600 square feet of living space, three full bathrooms, four bedrooms, two fireplaces and central air-conditioning. Taxes are $4,082. Brenda Holder, (401) 932-7806 or (401) 263-5057, rd1@cox.net, has the listing. An open house is planned for today and tomorrow from 1 to 3 p.m.How to submit a House of the Week

A different House of the Week appears each Saturday in the projoHomes section of The Providence Journal. The feature tells the story of the house and the people who have lived in it. If you would like us to consider a house for sale as a subject of this news feature, send a photo, information about the house and why it is of interest, to Faye Zuckerman, real estate writer,

75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902; fax (401) 277-8250; or e-mail pjhomes@projo.com.

For more information,

call (401) 277-7333.

fzuckerm@projo.com