Movie Producer and his amazing artist wife wanted a new artist studio. We designed a two-story artist studio with spiral staircase opening to the rear yard in view. There was also exposed flooring, open beams and sky lights along with lots natural lighting.

This project was a referral from Robert Niesner of Legacy Construction & Development, Inc. This project has a great history. It was a total home remodel. The home is a large estate hillside type tiered property. Before we started working on this project, the client had called me several times, explaining that the previous Architect had a good design but they were having communication issues. I agreed to visit the site and see what the issues were. My first thought was that I should have visited the site sooner. The previous design reduced the quality of every aspect of the home. In a two-story home, the connection is the most important. This home had a large basement type space. We relocated the stairs to be open through the living room to the new expanded lower level family gaming room. This integrated both floors and set the tone for opening up the lower floor to the exterior down slope gardens. All walls facing the rear yard were dramatically opened up with variations of window seat extensions, whole wall window, and new doors to an expanded rear balcony with direct stairs to the exterior terraces.

It is always great to have a project within walking distance of one’s office. The project scope entailed a new front entry canopy and the total redo of the master suite, dinning, laundry wing of the home. This is an old ranch style home that had not been upgraded. It is as current when we did this over 10 years ago as it is today. The best part of the master suite is the long hall that used to go to the bedroom is now incorporated into the expanded bathroom, dressing area and closets as an angled passageway with usable space all along it. The master bathroom then has the articulation with wider and narrower with this all based on the uses of tub, shower, toilets, and the lavatory counters. There is nothing boring along the master bedroom circulation space!

What do you do when your parents want to down size their home and you want to modernize yours? With this client, the answer was to create a new master suite/living area, modernize the existing kitchen, family dining and living rooms with a new laundry area and sell the kids home. The new master living area is used by the father while the modernized home was moved into by their kids and their family. The children’s home was sold and you have 3 generations living under 1 roof. This is how societies have lived for thousands of years. In America, it is a lost concept. Live, love, and support each other. Wow! The addition took advantage of the large site, the view of the back yard from the existing house and the amount of light filtering into each area of the residence. The addition was designed at angles to the existing home to help create an exterior rear yard. This maximized the views from the existing house. Vaulted ceiling gave breath to the rooms. Flexibility on use was consciously designed. Water retention systems were installed in the form of a Water Garden and PV systems are planned for a roof top installation. The project was successful, completed on budget and is happily being enjoyed by three generations of family.