Remodel
City / Kenter Canyon, CA Program / 800 sq. ft. addition Completion / 1986
The existing house, designed by Quincy Jones in 1950, has a distinctive low-slung gable roof that hovers over concrete block, wood siding, and a wall of sliding glass to the south. To this, the client wished to add about 800 sq. ft. of bedrooms and bathrooms, and enlarge the kitchen without compromising the integrity of the original house. There was insufficient room to “invisibly” add bedrooms to the east along the line of the ridge, and additions north and south in the “50’s gable style” only resulted in clumsy overblown forms. Consequently, the existing rectangular gable-roofed form was not violated and new space was added in complementary, autonomous forms: the bathrooms in a painted glass two-story cube, and two bedrooms in the curved wedge built into the up-slope.