The goal of the project was to expand the existing beach bungalow to accommodate merging of the clients’ households.
There were many constraints for this project, as the footprint of
the house was already maxed out to the setbacks on the small lot. The only possibility was to add a new second story. Because of these spatial constraints, efficiency was key to the design strategy. The existing first floor plan, which chopped the house into small rooms, was reconfigured in favor of an open plan. At the front of the house, a tiny bedroom was replaced with the staircase, which allowed the height of the new second story mass to be stepped back from the street. New bedrooms, bathrooms and closets upstairs then could be more generously sized, helping ease the transition of merging two households.