I asked the listing agent for the house, Judy Meuschke, if this is the most eccentric house she’s ever been involved in listing — "Yes!"

Meuschke says many people are surprised when they walk inside this 2,700-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. They expect something cavelike: dark, musty, weird. Instead, the interior is bright and airy, a meditation in cream with orange accents.

"It’s cozy," Meuschke says. "It’s really livable. I love the house."

She is showing me around because the current owner has moved to a smaller place, not too far from here. The woman keeps a low profile and doesn’t want her name used for this story, but she has done a lot of work on the place over the more than two decades she lived here.

The orange-and-purple paint job on the house is relatively new, as are a number of structural renovations, including a waterproof membrane, and insulation that obviates the need for air conditioning in the warmer months.

The kitchen, remodeled in the 2000s, looks to me like a biotech lab designed by Gustav Klimt. It was designed and built by Emeryville architect Eugene Tssui. His marching orders?

"The owner lives a life of art. She loves to live in art. She said to me, 'I need a stove. I need a place for a fridge. But otherwise, anything goes,' ” Tssui says.

Everything is round in the house, creating a biomorphic quality to the place. Even the walls are curved. You don't hang a painting. You set it on the floor and lean it back. Or build an alcove to house it.

"Because it’s a circular plan, I felt like the vocabulary of the design needed to fit that, the grammar of the geometry," Tssui says. "Nothing like that had ever been done before. We had to experiment ahead of time and adapt it to that space: the way that space works, the way it accommodates movement."