2D
3D
ADU Designed 2017, Main House Designed 2020
On a typical Los Angeles single family lot, we turned this house into a compound for four generations!
First on the list was making room for the client's expecting daughter and husband in an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) in place of the detached garage. The client's passion for woodworking made it easy for the family to see the beauty of a Western Red Cedar rainscreen. The human scale of the cedar wood planks (1"x1.5" in cross section) make it easy to relate our physical body's scale to the scale of the two story home. With two bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, this home suites the young family nicely.
Once it became clear that the client's mother-in-law was ready to move from Canada to be with her three generations of progeny, an addition and renovation of the main house was a order. The brief for this work was to clean up the flow of the existing one story house, emphasizing connections back and forth to the ADU. A master suite was added in a second floor, and all of the bathrooms and the kitchen were completely renovated. A beautiful Palos Verdes stone chimney was preserved. The balance of the first floor exterior was completely insulated and reclad in hand troweled smooth cement plaster. It fell to the second floor addition to connect materially to the ADU with its Western Red cedar rainscreen facade.
There are many ways to a denser and thus more sustainable city: this home adds delight to the conversation!