A Hidden Gem

Exterior view of the addition.

A professional couple in Clearlake Riviera needed to enlarge their house for their growing family, so they enlisted my help. Their needs: a new master bedroom suite, an office, some reconfiguring of existing interior space, and a surface for a solar array. When they came to me they knew what they wanted as far as the space layout, but needed help pulling the project together.

The setting.

Exterior of the house from the rear.

The bedroom, including the clerestory with the intersecting roofs.

The office with tubular skylight.

The bathroom with stained glass window.

Clerestory at bathroom.

The chamber for the commode.

The entry to the small atrium.

Looking upward through the atrium opening.

The addition was designed to be thermally independent from the existing house. Although it is tied into the existing heating and cooling, it can be used as a refuge should it become uneconomical to condition the entire house. Although the clients expressed the need for privacy and light control, I designed in the flexibility to include more passive solar heating and daylighting at some later date.

Walking around the house gives little hint of the intersecting rooflines and the interesting spaces they create, or the interior atrium. As far as the neighbors are concerned, it's just another house like theirs. But inside, it's a unique and stimulating place to be.