39th Street
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LOCATION: Manhattan Beach, CA
TYPE: Single Family Residence
SIZE: 1,200 sf remodel and 600 s.f. addition
Stretching up. Entertaining friends is the key goal put forth by the client for this remodel and addition to the 1970’s beach house located on a hillside street just a few doors from the Pacific Ocean. MAKE took advantage of the new third floor as an opportunity to reorganize the house on its narrow site to provide a better organization and maximize the active spaces connection to the outdoors and the views of the ocean.
Kitchen, dining and living spaces are stacked at the front of the house with sliding doors that open the house to the crisp ocean air and views. The living room, previously on the 2nd floor was shifted to the new third floor and located adjacent a sizeable deck with a multi sliding door eroding the division between the deck and living room to create true indoor/outdoor space for the owner and her friends. A double height space with large glazed expanses opens above the kitchen to maintain connection to the living room on the third floor and draw light into the 2nd floor.
Glossy white panel cladding with an aluminum eyebrow window defines the location of the kitchen to the exterior, the heart of the home. Adjacent, layers of seamless brown siding reminiscent of the layers of the earth stack and reach upward to embrace the new third floor. The layered cladding expands to the interior adjacent the sliding doors to emphasize the indoor/ outdoor connectivity.
Project Credits:
Principals in charge: William Beauter and Jess Mullen-Carey, Project Manager: Project Manager: Kathleen Dahlberg, Project Team: Sachie Fujimori
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RESPONSIBLE REMODELING
Often the easy road seems to be to demolish the existing structure and start from scratch. This approach however is typically very wasteful since many of the existing materials will not be possible to reuse or recycle. With a little clever thinking and understanding of how buildings are built, remodeling, when well considered can be much more efficient in attaining a client’s goals, budget and in being environmentally responsible. How do we as design professionals responsibly consider our approaches to remodeling? Being green is more than just the finishes used on a building, it should be considerate of the existing conditions of the site and or existing structure and follow a path most efficiently achieving the projects needs and goals.
The Manhattan Beach residence is one project that arrived on MAKE’s doorstep with a cart full of baggage, including a difficult narrow hillside site and an existing two story residence built under a much less stringent building code. The clients desire to add more living area to accommodate her needs could only be accommodated by two options, tear it down and start from scratch –or- grow upward and add a new story on top of the existing structure. Adding a new story in (especially in California) is a little trickier than it may at first seem. With the changes in codes and addressing structural capacities needed for an intense earthquake zone, walls and foundation need to be upgraded to accommodate the addition. Often this is where many would be remodelers decide tearing down is the way to go!
Working with the client, we assessed her needs and the existing structure and set in place three criteria; work with what exists, retain elements that still work and reuse elements where possible. Largely, the functionality of the existing two stories satisfied a portion of the owner’s needs, the exception being the kitchen and dining areas which were undersized for the clients’ lifestyle and were a major component driving the necessity of the project.
Planning around the existing had to begin with the structural upgrades necessary to support the new third story. Our approach to the structural system intended to maintain as much of the existing foundation and wall framing system as possible and strategically install new posts and foundation pads to avoid having to completely upgrade the existing foundations and demolish the existing wall finishes as would typically be required to retrofit the existing walls. This allowed us to maintain much of the existing interior finishes rather than demolishing and disposing, and having to install new materials in their place.
The existing staircase also required careful consideration in planning the addition to strategically retain it in its current location without requiring it to be rebuilt. The location of the stair in the center of the space also provided a golden opportunity to not only retain it, but to utilize it as an aesthetic focus of the space in its extension upward to the new story as an integration to a new screen wall between the kitchen and existing stairway doubling in function as a shelving system.
Attention to retaining existing elements resulted in strategic planning around the existing first and second level bathrooms and two existing bedrooms on the second level. Existing building framing and exterior finishes were also largely salvaged by incorporating necessary structural upgrades from the interior side of the walls. Re-appropriation of existing elements such as the kitchen cabinets and fixtures, the powder room fixtures and finishes, were carefully considered interventions with successful reincorporation into the completed project.
Where new materials were required, selections of Exterior finishes including Extira and James Hardie cement board were chosen in part due to their attention to sustainable practices in material production including their use of recycled content and reuse of manufacturing byproducts. Energy efficient window and passive shading devices have moderated the summer heat gain and winter heat loss.
The outcome of attention to the reuse of the existing building elements has resulted in less refuse disposal and less use of new material to achieve a lower environmental impact due to the remodel without sacrificing the client’s aesthetic sensibilities.
