FAIRFIELD, Conn: Architect Mark Halstead sees more than most people when he looks at the split-level houses in his neighborhood. He likes the homes that feature roofs with large overhangs, prominent windows and stone walls jutting from their sides.

He admires the homes' cool, confident air and the way they blend into their surroundings. Halstead said he fell in love with that style of architecture before he knew who designed the houses, but wasn't surprised to learn they were the work of one man - Victor Civkin.

Civkin died nearly 40 years ago, and his name isn't familiar to many residents or even to more knowledgeable students of architecture. But Halstead believes Civkin's name should be better known because he brought modern home architecture to Fairfield in the 1940s and '50s, and did it in a way that proved timeless, though many people did not appreciate it at the time.

Rena Schine, Civkin's daughter, said a bank refused to give her father a mortgage for a house he wanted to build on Ermine Street for his family in the 1940s because officials felt the design was too modern and, therefore, too risky. Builders complained they couldn't build what Civkin designed only to discover they could, Schine said.

``He was different and, as a result, he paid the price because he was different. There was always a kind of fight with society,'' Schine said. Civkin's passion for architecture evolved from his passion for art, and it proved useful in breaking new ground in mid-20th century home design, according to both Schine and Halstead. ``It's not as though he was in a wave.

He was the wave,'' Halstead said. Halstead is now on a crusade to ensure Civkin's homes survive the tear-down-and-rebuild frenzy taking place in many suburban communities. He wants to save several dozen Civkin houses in his Sky Top neighborhood by having it designated a historic district or listed on a national register of historic places. ``We have a unique neighborhood and I think it's well worth preserving. We're very interested in keeping our character,'' Halstead said. ``Certainly, I moved to this neighborhood because of what it is physically.''

Carol Wilson, who bought a Civkin-designed home on Sky Top Drive nine years ago, said her family ``loves living in this house.'' ``The sleek design, the living room that points to the ceiling, is just so architecturally different,'' Wilson said. ``The whole half of the living room is all window-based. It brings the sunlight in. It's just refreshing.

That room alone I love.'' Halstead has identified 46 Civkin homes in Fairfield so far, and others in Bridgeport, Easton, Trumbull, Westport, Greenwich, Milford, Wilton and Woodbridge. Schine said her father also built homes in New York and Kentucky. Civkin earned a degree in architecture in Moscow and emigrated to America in 1922. With his wife, Bertha, he first lived in Chicago and then moved to Fairfield, where he landed a job designing kitchens at General Electric Co.'s  Home Bureau, a service agency for builders and carpenters. Civkin later designed all-electric homes for GE and supervised construction of GE's auditorium in Bridgeport, GE's building at the World's Fair in New York, and a kitchen at the White House for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Designing homes proved to be Civkin's true calling, and he broke away from GE to devote all of his time to that work. Draftsmen couldn't work fast enough for Civkin, so he decided to no longer use them and instead did the work himself. When builders questioned his designs, Civkin showed up at muddy job sites in a suit and tie, challenging them in a way that won their respect, Schine said.

``He was passionate and opinionated, but people loved him because, even though he might totally disagree with you in a fit of passion, he was genuine and talked to everybody as an equal,'' she said. Schine said her father's demand for perfection wasn't based on pettiness or an insistence at having his way, but because he ``had big ideas and he believed everybody and anybody can perform big things.'' Schine said her father found beauty in ordinary things and once made a picture frame out of gutters. ``Beauty isn't something you get at Tiffany's.

Beauty, to him, was something real and alive,'' she said. Civkin died April 16, 1968, at the age of 69. Gerry E. Trager, a Bridgeport woman who lived in a Civkin-designed house, eulogized him at the time by saying he combined qualities of a poet and builder, artist and designer, and dreamer and realist. Schine said she is touched by Halstead's crusade to preserve her father's architecture. ``This is like a validation for me that people do understand and do appreciate,'' Schine said.