[3][4][5] Architectural historian Stephen Fox characterized Barnstone's approach as one committed to personal vision, free inquiry, and delight over orthodoxy or conventional wisdom, resulting in diverse buildings that combined proportional grace with wit and charm, and diminutive scale with spatial expansiveness.
[6] Architecture writers identify Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson and Charles Eames as influences on the houses Barnstone and Bolton designed, such as the Lawrence Blum (1954), Gordon (1955), Moustier (1956) and Winterbotham (I960) structures; they have been described externally as geometrically precise, surely proportioned "structural cages," whose idiosyncratic internal plans contrasted open, glass-walled spaces with intimate, compact enclosures.
[10] The Art Barn was a corrugated-iron, tension-cable-supported structure commissioned by art collectors Dominique and John De Menil as a temporary exhibition site; the structure remained in use for over 40 years, its industrial aesthetic, jutting angles and elegant proportions serving as inspiration for Houston's “Tin House” architectural movement.
[11][12][13][8] Barnstone and Aubry also built several notable houses: the Maher (1964),[14] Bell (1969) and Kempner (1969) in Houston, and the Levin in Galveston (1969), among others.
[5][2] Architectural historians describe them as externally self-effacing structures emphasizing intimacy, anonymity and solemnity, which opened "internally with high ceilings, simple planar walls, and dramatic expanses of glass";[5][2] The Maher House was featured in Architectural Record in 1965 and in the book, 25 Years of Record Houses.