Challenges: Reuse the existing house situated on a tight lot with restrictive setbacks, design within a tight budget and timeline, create a dynamic sculptural Architectural design that masks and reinvents the traditional existing mass into an entirely “new” modernist and clean vernacular. Maximize the outdoor rooms of the site, introduce landscaping, and create a meditative swimming pool as a focus for the site.  

The macro design was driven by the restraints, the solution is a parti pris instituting a strong modernist gable form placed in front of the towers of the existing structure, masking and allowing them to be used as back of house scope. Public living is contained largely in this minimal open space with articulated and artful lighting, rich materials and the creation of a dynamic stair connection to the open lower floor studio area all dynamically driven by the articulated solar angles and re-designed landscaping of the site.  

The palette employed combines the different volumes into one mass: cedar, fine plaster, white oak, walnut, steel and glass each re-define the existing volumetric forms in a minimal way allowing its inhabitants bright pure space clad similarly. Where possible the materials were used and self performed to cut market rates such as the steel and strand wood framing, the stair, the foundation and the millwork. BIM Cad technology generated the house to be designed and built in a fast track allowing building in the field to occur in real time. Highly efficient insulation, thermally insulated glass and a geothermal system with heat pumps create an efficient structure.  The result is an energy-efficient, budget oriented, and high performing structure reading as one vernacular and within one minimal Architectural design.