Waynesboro master bath renovation in Houston, Texas. This is a small 5'x12' bathroom that we were able to squeeze a lot of nice features into. When dealing with a very small vanity top, using a wall mounted faucet frees up your counter space. The use of large 24x24 tiles in the small shower cuts down on the busyness of grout lines and gives a larger scale to the small space. The wall behind the commode is shared with another bath and is actually 8" deep, so we boxed out that space and have a very deep storage cabinet that looks shallow from the outside. A large sheet glass mirror mounted with standoffs also helps the space to feel larger. Granite: Brown Sucuri 3cm Vanity: Stained mahogany, custom made by our carpenter Wall Tile: Emser Paladino Albanelle 24x24 Floor Tile: Emser Perspective Gray 12x24 Accent Tile: Emser Silver Marble Mini Offset Liner Tile: Emser Silver Cigaro 1x12 Wall Paint Color: Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay Trim Paint Color: Sherwin Williams Alabaster Plumbing Fixtures: Danze Lighting: Kenroy Home Margot Mini Pendants Toilet: American Standard Champion 4 All Photos by Curtis Lawson

Photo: Adrienne DeRosa © 2015 Houzz Although the original plan was to refurbish the existing mantelpieces in the living and dining rooms, the Williamsons opted for a complete change of perspective. “One thing led to another, and they came out,” Catherine explains. “First, we removed them to check if the pest problem that had hit the rest of the house had hit the mantels, and it did.” After removing the original pieces, the couple fell in love with the brick arches underneath. Flexing their skills as DIYers, the couple designed and built a floating mantel to highlight the fireplace. Its modern lines play against rich grain and warm tones to embody the marriage of Bryan and Catherine’s diverse styles. “Our style is unique because we tend to mix elements of different design styles,” Catherine says. “We love mixing old and new, masculine and feminine, and so on…. He tends to gravitate toward contemporary, sleek designs, where I gravitate toward more eclectic, feminine elements.” Instructions for creating a mantlepice like this one can be found on the Williamson's blog: www.beginninginthemiddle.net/2014/12/30/i-just-want-brick/

Max Kim-Bee
Inspiration for a contemporary living room remodel in New York with white walls

RYAN GAMMA
Trendy open concept light wood floor and beige floor family room photo in Tampa with white walls and a media wall

Inspiration for a huge craftsman green two-story mixed siding exterior home remodel in Atlanta

Example of a trendy open concept light wood floor, beige floor, exposed beam and wood ceiling living room design in Boston with white walls

Nestled in the hills of Orinda, California, this 1951 residence is one of only seven extant homes, now known as “The Magnificent Seven”, designed by architect Olof Dahlstrand, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. With its low-slung rooflines, natural materials, and deep integration with the sloping landscape, the home is a pristine example of mid-century modern design inspired by Wright’s organic principles. Over the years, prior homeowners have emphasized preservation, ensuring that the house remained relatively untouched. Each owner has respected the original architecture and stayed true to Dahlstrand’s intent. When a family of five—two college-aged sons and a middle school-aged daughter—acquired the property, they were captivated by its history, legacy of care, and architectural significance. While they appreciated Dahlstrand’s original vision, they also recognized the need to adapt the home for contemporary living while preserving its design integrity. The remodel was conceived as a thoughtful response to the past—an effort to bring the house into the 21st century without compromising its soul. The primary mandate was to maintain architectural continuity while improving the functionality, comfort, and livability for a modern family. The design team—architects and contractor alike—worked with a shared reverence for the original architecture, allowing that mindset to guide even the most technical or pragmatic decisions. A key objective was to increase natural light in the kitchen—a departure from Wrightian principles of enclosed, intimate cooking spaces—while maintaining the home’s architectural language. The kitchen was reconfigured to foster a stronger connection to adjacent living spaces while retaining the underlying concept of spatial separation. One of the most transformative architectural changes was the removal of a ridge beam that was originally planned to remain visible through the kitchen. During construction, the team collaborated on a better solution: a wide-flanged steel beam concealed within the roof envelope. This subtle move preserved the clean lines and ceiling continuity, a modern update carried out with utmost respect for the existing framework. The home’s original powder room, previously accessible only through the kitchen, was relocated for better flow and privacy. A new powder room was carved out of former kitchen cabinetry—a narrow, interior space that could have felt dark and enclosed. To avoid this, the design extended the line of original transom windows into the new powder room and added a skylight above the vanity. The result is a bright and airy space that feels consistent with the rest of the home. Other updates included the installation of new solid-core interior doors with veneers carefully matched to the original mahogany, enhancing the continuity of the interiors. Even smaller decisions, such as placing the door knobs at 42 inches high, mirrored the original proportions. Every choice reflected a shared belief between the architect, contractor, and client: that new work should serve the integrity of the old. The home’s extensive interior redwood millwork and paneling was meticulously restored. Where new materials were introduced—such as the replacement redwood soffit paneling—the contractor took pains to find finish nails that matched the original, rather than using modern equivalents. This level of craftsmanship and collaboration defined the project. It extended even to the detailing of a blind door to the new powder room, which had to disappear into the existing redwood board-and-batten wall. It was a team effort: the owner found a suitable handle, the architects devised the custom in-swing mechanism, and the contractor executed it so the door aligned precisely with the battens. Throughout, the homeowners were deeply engaged in the design process. One, a meticulous design enthusiast, focused on aesthetic integrity and historic detail. The other brought a practical and function-driven perspective, ensuring that new fixtures and materials would be durable and require minimal maintenance. While the home’s location posed no major site challenges, sustainability was a key concern. The team upgraded the roof insulation, installed solar panels with battery storage, and added ductless mini-split cooling systems. Lighting was another area where modern technology was woven into a historic framework: new square LED fixtures echo the original custom perimeter soffit lights, maintaining the design language while offering advanced performance. A planned expansion of a bedroom into suite with a bathroom had to be shelved due to budget constraints and the high cost of below-grade foundation work. Still, the team focused their efforts on making the most of the existing footprint, resolving constraints through design ingenuity rather than adding square footage. This renovation represents a collaborative achievement in preserving and evolving a historically significant home. Every decision was shaped by a shared ethos among clients, architects, and contractor: to maintain the home’s architectural soul while updating it for contemporary life. The result is a timeless modernist residence that continues Olof Dahlstrand’s legacy, remaining grounded in nature, craftsmanship, and human-scale design. Klopf Architecture Team: John Klopf, AIA, Klara Kevane, Fernanda Bernardes
Interior Architectural Design: Klopf Architecture
Structural Engineer: Daniel Bastiao
Contractor: Don Larwood, Larwood Construction Photography: Mariko Reed Year Completed: 2022

Located in the heart of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the building was erected on a shallow commercial lot between two 120 year old masonry buildings and a new residential rental building. 330 Grand Street is a mix of 725 SF 1BRs and 1050 SF 2BR apartments. It also contains a 1100 SF two story duplex as well as private and public rooftop space, large private balconies for most units and two large private terraces for the ground floor units. 330 Grand Street was originally designed and approved at the NYC DOB as a prefabricated modular building. During the pandemic, as shipping costs skyrocketed putting the project at risk, we suggested redesigning the building as a reinforced cast-in-place concrete structure. Concrete was readily available and prices had not been affected by the demand increase that many other materials suffered in the pandemic. We took this opportunity to raise floor to ceiling heights, enlarge high performance windows and redistribute the buildings MEPFS and Structural Systems to create very open floor plans. The challenge was to create a luxurious sensorial living experience with very limited means. In a city with very high construction costs, low cost residential buildings in the area are usually devoid of good quality, design and character. Our approach was to aim high for the end user, prioritizing natural light, open space with long visual perspectives, high ceilings and as always, rejecting the use of predefined building templates. Our biggest challenge was to ensure that the small spaces feel as clean cut, large and bright as possible. Several unique design decisions were made to ensure low cost and high quality; Floor plans were laid out so that spaces were wide open and free of clutter from mechanical or structural interruptions. Therefore all infrastructure was placed in lateral demising walls, which in turn act as the unit’s storage and kitchen. The apartments feel wide open, are super quiet and have more storage space than any other comparable apartment in the city. To solve the problem of the site’s shallow commercial lot which is typically prone to dark interior spaces we focused our attention on the building’s envelope. Instead of the usual small punched window openings, oversized high performance windows were designed to ensure that light penetrated as far as possible into the units. In the smaller 1BR units, the full 50’ depth of the lot is perceived by partitioning spaces with sliding pocket doors that can be retracted to allow deep visual perspectives, making the sight lines in the space feel longer, larger, more ample than normal. In addition to the full height glazing, each unit above the 2nd floor receives a 7 foot covered balcony, adding 120 to 240 sf to each apartment, something unusual in New York City buildings. The space is large enough for a full size dining table, when the weather permits being outside. We also worked hard to ensure modularity. For example, all kitchen units are all identical throughout the building. The idea of modularity and the economy of the repetitive unit is exercised to the maximum through the building. Hardware, appliances, flooring, wall coverings and material finishes are all carefully selected to feel bespoke, high quality and unique. It was important to KURV that the result of this work manifest into something that would deeply connect with the end user and sustain relationships with the consumers of this space. All images by KURV Architecture ©

Nestled in the hills of Orinda, California, this 1951 residence is one of only seven extant homes, now known as “The Magnificent Seven”, designed by architect Olof Dahlstrand, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. With its low-slung rooflines, natural materials, and deep integration with the sloping landscape, the home is a pristine example of mid-century modern design inspired by Wright’s organic principles. Over the years, prior homeowners have emphasized preservation, ensuring that the house remained relatively untouched. Each owner has respected the original architecture and stayed true to Dahlstrand’s intent. When a family of five—two college-aged sons and a middle school-aged daughter—acquired the property, they were captivated by its history, legacy of care, and architectural significance. While they appreciated Dahlstrand’s original vision, they also recognized the need to adapt the home for contemporary living while preserving its design integrity. The remodel was conceived as a thoughtful response to the past—an effort to bring the house into the 21st century without compromising its soul. The primary mandate was to maintain architectural continuity while improving the functionality, comfort, and livability for a modern family. The design team—architects and contractor alike—worked with a shared reverence for the original architecture, allowing that mindset to guide even the most technical or pragmatic decisions. A key objective was to increase natural light in the kitchen—a departure from Wrightian principles of enclosed, intimate cooking spaces—while maintaining the home’s architectural language. The kitchen was reconfigured to foster a stronger connection to adjacent living spaces while retaining the underlying concept of spatial separation. One of the most transformative architectural changes was the removal of a ridge beam that was originally planned to remain visible through the kitchen. During construction, the team collaborated on a better solution: a wide-flanged steel beam concealed within the roof envelope. This subtle move preserved the clean lines and ceiling continuity, a modern update carried out with utmost respect for the existing framework. The home’s original powder room, previously accessible only through the kitchen, was relocated for better flow and privacy. A new powder room was carved out of former kitchen cabinetry—a narrow, interior space that could have felt dark and enclosed. To avoid this, the design extended the line of original transom windows into the new powder room and added a skylight above the vanity. The result is a bright and airy space that feels consistent with the rest of the home. Other updates included the installation of new solid-core interior doors with veneers carefully matched to the original mahogany, enhancing the continuity of the interiors. Even smaller decisions, such as placing the door knobs at 42 inches high, mirrored the original proportions. Every choice reflected a shared belief between the architect, contractor, and client: that new work should serve the integrity of the old. The home’s extensive interior redwood millwork and paneling was meticulously restored. Where new materials were introduced—such as the replacement redwood soffit paneling—the contractor took pains to find finish nails that matched the original, rather than using modern equivalents. This level of craftsmanship and collaboration defined the project. It extended even to the detailing of a blind door to the new powder room, which had to disappear into the existing redwood board-and-batten wall. It was a team effort: the owner found a suitable handle, the architects devised the custom in-swing mechanism, and the contractor executed it so the door aligned precisely with the battens. Throughout, the homeowners were deeply engaged in the design process. One, a meticulous design enthusiast, focused on aesthetic integrity and historic detail. The other brought a practical and function-driven perspective, ensuring that new fixtures and materials would be durable and require minimal maintenance. While the home’s location posed no major site challenges, sustainability was a key concern. The team upgraded the roof insulation, installed solar panels with battery storage, and added ductless mini-split cooling systems. Lighting was another area where modern technology was woven into a historic framework: new square LED fixtures echo the original custom perimeter soffit lights, maintaining the design language while offering advanced performance. A planned expansion of a bedroom into suite with a bathroom had to be shelved due to budget constraints and the high cost of below-grade foundation work. Still, the team focused their efforts on making the most of the existing footprint, resolving constraints through design ingenuity rather than adding square footage. This renovation represents a collaborative achievement in preserving and evolving a historically significant home. Every decision was shaped by a shared ethos among clients, architects, and contractor: to maintain the home’s architectural soul while updating it for contemporary life. The result is a timeless modernist residence that continues Olof Dahlstrand’s legacy, remaining grounded in nature, craftsmanship, and human-scale design. Klopf Architecture Team: John Klopf, AIA, Klara Kevane, Fernanda Bernardes
Interior Architectural Design: Klopf Architecture
Structural Engineer: Daniel Bastiao
Contractor: Don Larwood, Larwood Construction Photography: Mariko Reed Year Completed: 2022

Nestled in the hills of Orinda, California, this 1951 residence is one of only seven extant homes, now known as “The Magnificent Seven”, designed by architect Olof Dahlstrand, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. With its low-slung rooflines, natural materials, and deep integration with the sloping landscape, the home is a pristine example of mid-century modern design inspired by Wright’s organic principles. Over the years, prior homeowners have emphasized preservation, ensuring that the house remained relatively untouched. Each owner has respected the original architecture and stayed true to Dahlstrand’s intent. When a family of five—two college-aged sons and a middle school-aged daughter—acquired the property, they were captivated by its history, legacy of care, and architectural significance. While they appreciated Dahlstrand’s original vision, they also recognized the need to adapt the home for contemporary living while preserving its design integrity. The remodel was conceived as a thoughtful response to the past—an effort to bring the house into the 21st century without compromising its soul. The primary mandate was to maintain architectural continuity while improving the functionality, comfort, and livability for a modern family. The design team—architects and contractor alike—worked with a shared reverence for the original architecture, allowing that mindset to guide even the most technical or pragmatic decisions. A key objective was to increase natural light in the kitchen—a departure from Wrightian principles of enclosed, intimate cooking spaces—while maintaining the home’s architectural language. The kitchen was reconfigured to foster a stronger connection to adjacent living spaces while retaining the underlying concept of spatial separation. One of the most transformative architectural changes was the removal of a ridge beam that was originally planned to remain visible through the kitchen. During construction, the team collaborated on a better solution: a wide-flanged steel beam concealed within the roof envelope. This subtle move preserved the clean lines and ceiling continuity, a modern update carried out with utmost respect for the existing framework. The home’s original powder room, previously accessible only through the kitchen, was relocated for better flow and privacy. A new powder room was carved out of former kitchen cabinetry—a narrow, interior space that could have felt dark and enclosed. To avoid this, the design extended the line of original transom windows into the new powder room and added a skylight above the vanity. The result is a bright and airy space that feels consistent with the rest of the home. Other updates included the installation of new solid-core interior doors with veneers carefully matched to the original mahogany, enhancing the continuity of the interiors. Even smaller decisions, such as placing the door knobs at 42 inches high, mirrored the original proportions. Every choice reflected a shared belief between the architect, contractor, and client: that new work should serve the integrity of the old. The home’s extensive interior redwood millwork and paneling was meticulously restored. Where new materials were introduced—such as the replacement redwood soffit paneling—the contractor took pains to find finish nails that matched the original, rather than using modern equivalents. This level of craftsmanship and collaboration defined the project. It extended even to the detailing of a blind door to the new powder room, which had to disappear into the existing redwood board-and-batten wall. It was a team effort: the owner found a suitable handle, the architects devised the custom in-swing mechanism, and the contractor executed it so the door aligned precisely with the battens. Throughout, the homeowners were deeply engaged in the design process. One, a meticulous design enthusiast, focused on aesthetic integrity and historic detail. The other brought a practical and function-driven perspective, ensuring that new fixtures and materials would be durable and require minimal maintenance. While the home’s location posed no major site challenges, sustainability was a key concern. The team upgraded the roof insulation, installed solar panels with battery storage, and added ductless mini-split cooling systems. Lighting was another area where modern technology was woven into a historic framework: new square LED fixtures echo the original custom perimeter soffit lights, maintaining the design language while offering advanced performance. A planned expansion of a bedroom into suite with a bathroom had to be shelved due to budget constraints and the high cost of below-grade foundation work. Still, the team focused their efforts on making the most of the existing footprint, resolving constraints through design ingenuity rather than adding square footage. This renovation represents a collaborative achievement in preserving and evolving a historically significant home. Every decision was shaped by a shared ethos among clients, architects, and contractor: to maintain the home’s architectural soul while updating it for contemporary life. The result is a timeless modernist residence that continues Olof Dahlstrand’s legacy, remaining grounded in nature, craftsmanship, and human-scale design. Klopf Architecture Team: John Klopf, AIA, Klara Kevane, Fernanda Bernardes
Interior Architectural Design: Klopf Architecture
Structural Engineer: Daniel Bastiao
Contractor: Don Larwood, Larwood Construction Photography: Mariko Reed Year Completed: 2022

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This proposal is for a new two-story home on the vacant heavily wooded lot with an existing 150-foot-long driveway lined by several beautiful oak trees culminating in a behemoth 43-inch oak tree where the driveway meets the main lot. The far end of the driveway terminates in a grove of three 43/40/43-inch redwoods and at the very center of the vacant lot stands a gargantuan V-twin 59-inch redwood tree paired with a “small” 29-inch redwood tree. The owners want to build a beautiful contemporary-styled home for their family that fully enjoys and embraces the mature trees on their cozy 65-foot by 100-foot lot. As with all small, constrained lots, this project’s site design started first with meeting the relatively large parking and car maneuvering requirements. Menlo Park’s Department of Transportation typically requires side-facing garages to have 24-feet of backup space. So that they could give the largest feature redwood tree on site an added four feet (50%) of clearance outside of its critical root zone, the owners agreed to install a vehicle turntable at the end of their driveway to eliminate the extra four feet of space needed to back up and turnaround. This allowed them to pull their garage forward an additional four feet towards the front property line on the panhandle side, drastically reducing the rest of the home’s impact on the gargantuan V-Twin paired redwood tree at the center of the lot. One of the owners has mobility issues, and accordingly, they first sought to design a one-story floor plan that incorporated all their family’s needs including plenty of covered patio and deck space to enjoy our fantastic California weather. But that single-story footprint spread too far into the critical root zones of several of the redwood trees on site, even despite the use of the vehicle turntable. During my interview process with the owners, they made it clear to me that one of their primary concerns is ensuring that the largest trees on site would thrive and become features of their new home after construction is complete. The single-story designs that removed the grove of three huge redwood trees were non-starters, as was the skimpy 5x10 master bath I designed when trying to squeeze the whole house program into an overly compromised single-story design. It was therefore deemed necessary to go with a two-story design despite the owner’s mobility issues. This two-story design has a much more compact ground floor footprint and has no bedrooms downstairs, other than the detached ADU. The owners must give up the floor area and incur the costs to install a residential elevator to access their upstairs master suite. Our ground floor footprint is smaller due to the two-story design decision, and our foundation is pulled away from the trees thanks to the vehicle turntable. Yet, a tiny portion of the home’s ground floor footprint still encroaches into the critical root zones of the largest 59” redwood tree. Therefore, as outlined in the Arborist Report prepared by Aesculus Arboricultural Consulting, the structural engineers are incorporating an array of drilled piers and shallow-grade beams for the main home’s foundation and deck area nearest the redwood’s critical root zone. This drilled piers and grade beam foundation is a type of “bridging” foundation as outlined in Aesculus’ report to preserve the health of these trees that the property was designed around. The rest of the foundation will be constructed as an insulated slab-on-grade foundation to minimize the number of steps and ramps needed for the owners to enjoy their home and patio areas. Despite the owner’s desire to keep as many trees as possible on site, and despite the smaller ground floor footprint and the advantage of the vehicle turntable, the need for a 20x20-foot garage and 20x20/25-foot guest parking space on our panhandle lot requires the removal of two heritage trees in the required driveway, a 16” coast redwood, and a 17” coast redwood. An alternate design, such as swapping the garage and guest parking locations north-to-south, still requires the removal of these two trees for vehicle maneuvering but has the added disadvantage of cutting off the home’s sightlines to the behemoth 43” oak tree just outside the currently proposed front patio space and living room. Jim Redman of Elements Landscape is proposing 13 new trees be planted on site to replace the lost value of these two heritage coast redwood trees. This contemporary architectural design features clean lines, and an abundance of full-height windows and large skylights to best take in the immense trees on site. To blend in with the forest-like setting, the home boasts a mix of rich textures and features a color palette of natural wood tones contrasted with dark blue and black. Once through the new steel gate at the street and down the 150-foot tree-lined driveway, a large covered front patio becomes visible past the neighbor’s detached accessory structure. The covered patio is just across the driveway from the beautiful 43” behemoth coast live oak. The single plane of the covered patio roof is delicately supported by a pair of steel posts in a “V-twin” configuration much like the largest redwood trees that tower over the center of the lot and will still be visible above the new two-story home, even from the front yard. The patio is covered in a dark-colored standing seam roof, with steel C-channel fascias, and tongue-and-groove wood ceiling planks on the underside. Generously sized skylights on the patio roof and inside the living area allow for impressive views of the amazing oak canopy as well as precious natural light. Supporting the sloped covered patio on the other side is the two-car garage with a secondary bedroom suite stacked above the garage. This two-story volume is to be clad in vertical clear-coated redwood siding, to tie in with the grove of three 43-inch redwood trees just beyond. The garage door, and the bank of windows for Bedroom#2 above feature a steel fascia eyebrow header feature to provide shade and overhang protection, as we are not proposing a large overhang at this “redwood trunk”. The garage and bedroom volume are pulled 16 feet away from the side property line, instead of the minimum required setback of 6’-6”, thus leaving plenty of room for the redwood grove and existing mature pear tree to continue to thrive. This existing mature green screen in this 16-foot-wide side yard is a feature worth soaking in, which is why tall windows with low sill heights are proposed for both the stairs and the upstairs hallway. Though it may be infrequent to approve side-facing 2nd floor windows with sill heights as low as what we’re proposing, we are confident that the mature green screen and the over 16-foot-wide side yard are sufficient to provide for the continued privacy of our neighbor’s rear yard space, especially considering theses windows are in walkway zones. The covered patio at the front entry is also bound by the 10-foot-tall living room. The great room is clad in a dark blue brick veneer, which wraps around all three sides of the living room. Upon entering the home from the covered patio, you are immediately greeted with one of the most impressive features of the home’s design: a 10-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide set of sliding glass doors. From the entry, this huge opening gives merely an initial glimpse of the massive trunks of the gargantuan V-twin redwoods sitting at the center of the lot. All three sliding glass panels open directly out into the smaller partially covered deck in the rear. This roof overhang element matches the design of the front patio with a steel C-channel fascia and a large skylight. But the rear deck’s roof element is set flat at a ten-foot ceiling height so that the living room’s ceiling seems to float above and out beyond the expanse of full-height sliding doors, thus creating an indoor-outdoor living space that will feel much larger than the home’s actual footprint. This rear covered deck is smaller than the patio in the front and also has a mix of solid and open-slatted roofing to allow for more solar access for the relatively small amount of open sky available. The downstairs living room is open to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the stair-and-elevator tower beyond. The stair tower is very open and glassy, and the stairs wind up and around the redwood-clad elevator tower. From certain perspectives in the 16-foot-wide side yard, it will almost seem as if the grove of three redwoods has a fourth tree that the house and the stairs were carefully built around. Other than the 3-foot-wide windows, the exterior walls of the stair tower, downstairs utility spaces, and Bedroom#3 above are finished in cement plaster, painted dark blue and black. The sloped roof over the stair-and-elevator tower continues cleanly over the area of upstairs Bedroom#3. This roof level is set by the side daylight plane and only yields an inside wall height of just under 6 feet in height. The owners are satisfied that the rest of this upstairs room has a nice vaulted ceiling to make up for the one short wall under the daylight plane. The rest of the ground floor adjacent to the stair tower consists of a small utility wing containing a half-bath, laundry, storage area, and an exterior alcove for the electric heat pump HVAC unit. This short wing also gives more accessible access to the rear yard deck, as well as a backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. The bright white stone backsplash for the outdoor kitchen provides contrast to the otherwise consistent use of cement plaster painted dark blue and black for the two-story wing closest to the detached ADU. Though Bedroom#3 is stacked directly above this small wing, it is relatively short to comply with the side daylight plane of this narrow lot. Still, to further help break up the scale of this wall, another steel fascia eyebrow element is set about 8 feet above the rear deck. The master suite sits centered above the ten-foot-tall great room. The master bedroom and its balcony, as well as the master bathtub area, have a commanding view of the central redwood trees and their impressive canopy, though the balcony is mostly recessed and should pose no privacy concerns to the neighbor’s rear yards. The master balcony parapet is clad in the same brick veneer continuing up from the living room below. A dark-painted metal rail makes up the rest of the open guardrail height. The entire length of the master balcony is comprised of 9-foot-tall sliding glass doors, but the area above the doors, as well as the area below the master bathroom windows, is accented with more redwood siding. The remainder of the master suite bathroom and walk-in closet is finished in cement plaster painted dark blue. The master bathroom has one side yard-facing window but will be frosted glass for both the owner’s and the neighbor’s privacy. The 2nd floor is capped under a simple gable roof design with one roof ridge and varying eave and rake overhangs depending on the 2nd-floor layout and solar orientation. Since these roof planes are quite difficult to see in the middle of the heavily wooded panhandle lot, we are proposing a white TPO roofing for these two upper roof planes as a more sustainable choice compared to more dark-colored roofing like the covered patios and detached ADU. The owners also wish to build a detached 292-square-foot Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) as an office and guest suite. For the ADU foundation to be situated outside the central redwood tree’s critical root zone, this relatively tiny structure takes advantage of the narrower 4-foot side and rear setbacks allowed for ADUs smaller than 800 square feet. The small L-shaped detached ADU frames a wonderful quasi-courtyard around the gargantuan V-twin redwoods at the center of the lot. The ADU shares a matching material palette consisting of cement plaster painted blue and black, vertical redwood siding and soffits, and thin brick veneer. The ADU also features large full-height windows. The only difference between the main home and the ADU material palette is that the roofing will be a dark composition shingle roofing since it will be quite visible from the master balcony.

This is not your traditional bungalow! While it shares some of the hallmarks of this historic home style, this bungalow brings the classic single-story design into the twenty-first century. The black-and-white facade shows a simple, but incredibly well thought out design consisting of mostly straight lines and glass. Modern architecture is all about simple designs where less is more. Clean and uncluttered home exterior trends have gained popularity over the years, as many homeowners are yearning to live peacefully without excess. Clean lines, basic forms, single-use of colour, repetition of structures and strategic use of metal, stone, stucco and glass materials are defining characteristics of this custom home in the upper-scale, inner-city community of North Glenmore Park in Calgary, Alberta.