It speaks to the brilliance of architect Harwell Hamilton Harris that this 1935 house in Pasadena feels so very current. The Laing House, currently on the market with Modern California House for $1.68 million, is the architect’s second built home, designed in the wake of his formative years working with Richard Neutra. It showcases his fascination with the module, which Neutra pioneered in 1929 with his Lovell Health House.

Here in Pasadena’s Poppy Peak historic district, the stucco walls, broad eaves, ribbon windows and boxed-in balcony reference another hero of Harris’s: Frank Lloyd Wright. Yet the modular system is what gives the Laing House its harmonious rhythmic patterns. Designed for the Caltech professor Graham Laing and his wife, it doubled as a lecture hall and library, with two distinct volumes separated by an entrance. After a sharp 90-degree turn from the foyer, the space opens into an 18-by-30-foot great room — suitable for large gatherings or intimate family living — with glass doors opening to a balcony facing the San Gabriel Mountains. The olive-green kitchen adjacent gets natural light from a south-facing band of windows. Original windows, doors, cabinetry, hardware and light fixtures remain, for the most part, remarkably intact.

The primary and guest bedrooms (there are two in all, and two bathrooms) also benefit from south-facing glass, with doors opening to the rear garden. With all the natural light comes abundant privacy.

The garden remains true to the original plan, with a composition of California native plants — it was devised in consultation with the great 20th-century horticulturalist Theodore Payne. The lot is nearly 6,000 sqft, and the house nearly 1,500.

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