A Svelte ADU Gives a Los Angeles Bungalow Room to Breathe

The backyard dwelling by OKB Architecture packs a large program into a narrow lot, allowing a family to spread outward from their two-bedroom home.

Just off a busy thoroughfare and a stone’s throw from a major freeway, Maria and Louis Gabriel’s street in Los Angeles’s West Adams district is an island of friendly normalcy—the kind of place where neighbors wave and kids ride their bikes and skateboards until the sun goes down. So when the couple outgrew the 1925 two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow they’d bought in 2010, trading up to a big house in the suburbs was off the table. "This community is so vibrant," says Maria. "We decided to make our home a place we wanted to be in forever."

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Kelly Vencill Sanchez
Contributing Editor
Dwell's Los Angeles-based contributing editor, Kelly has also written about design and architecture for Architectural Digest, Coastal Living and Luxe.

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