Koh Residence

We were able to design and build this house homeowners in Hermossa Beach which insisted on an open plan in order to take full advantage of the second floor view of the ocean that this addition afforded. Originally the residence was a small three bedroom, two bath with a pitched roof and we added a second floor with little imposition on the original residence. This was in part due to structural “straddeling” of the existing residence with the second floor with 6 new supporting posts on the exterior of the building. More public spaces (living room, dining room, kitchen) were moved to the second floor and bedrooms maintaned on the frist floor of the existing residence. We embraced the height restriction as an opportunity and in so doing created a comlex scalloped rom that is no more than 2” off of the maximum height limitation – offering the owners as much visual space as possible.

 

Structurally this was facilitated by leaving the existing first floor alone and straddling it with six columns (three on each side) that support the new second floor. In this manner intrusion into the first floor was minimized and the construction budget could be focused on building new footage rather than retrofitting old.

 

The total addition was 1350 Sq. Ft. with a 300 Sq. Ft. deck. The height restrictions required that we conform to the grade as it slopes to the rear of the site and to accommodate we ‘shaped’ the second floor to make the most of every allowable inch of available height. It sounds odd but given the necessary restrictions we embraced the height limitation as a design feature and used it conceptually to influence the design of the house.

 

Large expanses of windows and doors are positioned to make the deck an integral part of the second floor similar to a Lanai type of building organization.

 

In the end we really cant take all the credit because Jenny and David’s great taste and ability to share our vision for what this could be really made this special.