PASADENA — The red-orange stairway leading dramatically to the Constance M. Perkins house makes it clear: This is not your typical historic home.

For one thing, Perkins, its namesake and original owner, still lives there.

For another, the tiny residence in the San Rafael Hills was built in 1955--a decidedly recent vintage by Pasadena standards.

Nevertheless, it holds the city's highest historic designation, \o7 Historic Treasure.\f7 And Perkins, 76, has turned it into a showcase for her life and taste.

Designed for her by Los Angeles architect Richard J. Neutra, the Poppy Peak Drive house sits atop a hillside lushly covered with African daisy, ice plant and ivy.

Perkins, now retired after 36 years as a professor of art at Occidental College, said she collaborated with Neutra on every level of the design--down to telling him on which side of the bed she preferred her reading lamp. He had asked for an autobiographical essay that included her daily living habits and her likes and dislikes. She, in turn, had read his books on architecture.

"We worked as a team," said Perkins, an artist and critic as well as teacher. "I made suggestions; he either incorporated them or made counter-suggestions. I told him that this house had to be warm and had to be me."

It is both.

It abounds with paintings, sculptures and soft, handcrafted wool rugs created by her former students. Two tiny orange-cheeked waxbills flit inside a tall, brass bird cage placed against a glass wall overlooking mountain and valley views. The birds are Perkins' companions. "They speak to me every morning," she said.

At the Perkins house, nature comes indoors. Goldfish swim lazily in a living-room pond. The fishpond and the bed of white gravel alongside it extend indoors from the outside garden, bisected by a wall of glass.

Though one of Neutra's smallest projects--1,000 square feet of living space--the house's open floor plan lends a feeling of spaciousness. The large living-dining room extends to an open kitchen and is partially separated from a compact bedroom-den by curtains that act as a wall behind a black leather Neutra-designed sofa.

In front of the sofa is a cocktail table that can be raised for dining. Neutra created the table by placing a walnut door on metal legs.