Green roofs are aesthetically pleasing and have multiple positive environmental benefits, even if they are small in terms of square footage. Here, a green roof blooms atop the detached garage of a home.
Ample windows cut into the north elevation of the Valentine House, behind which live the architects. The openings reveal lofty double-height spaces inside. The ground-floor garage often serves as a shop for architectural model-making. Photos by: Roger Davies
When the team chose to preserve the function of the rolling garage door, it proved to be one of the biggest design challenges of the project. Says Garcia, “We didn’t want it to roll back into the new living space because it would limit our lighting options for the room.” Thus, an unconventional exterior-track rolling door was conceptualized that would not cut into the interior volume. In the backyard that was preserved in the remodel, an olive tree provides natural shade. Maintaining the outdoor area was especially important to the kids as a play area, and Anthony, an avid cook and gardener.
The landscape design arm of Arquitectonica, Arquitectonica Geo, is responsible for the Ballet Valet parking garage in Miami Beach. Photo by Dan Forer.
The home’s lower level serves as a garage, allowing direct access to the house.
Schaer replaced the garage’s crumbling wooden posts with an earthquake-resistant steel frame. He also excavated beneath the building, establishing a basement level for a workshop, storage, laundry, and water heater. The earth removed in the process was shoveled into concrete “boxes” in the yard. These form a raised terrace from which you can see the Olympic mountains.
BEFORE
After being used as an auto repair shop, the garage had been subdivided to include a dark storage area with an unsettingly low ceiling. Schaer opened up the space, replacing the collar ties in the rafters with a sloping triangular plane that Schaer says “draws the eye from one end of the space to the other, increasing its perceived size.” It’s also utilitarian, providing natural ventilation by funneling hot air up through a triangular vent window.
A utilitarian core contains the kitchen, bathroom, closet, and loft ladder. The kitchen’s walls are clad with recycled wooden boards trimmed with horizontal battens that hide the oven and refrigerator from view.
Standing-seam copper siding accentuates sections of the structure that provide shear support for the steel moment frame.
Garage Plan
A Outdoor Shower
B Bookshelf-Bar
C Original Walls
D Wood Stove
The walkways are broom-finished concrete and the landscaping features low-maintenance, hardy perennials.
The first-floor exterior walls and fence are clad with horizontal survey stakes, identical to the ones that dotted the lot when the Weinsteins first bought it; the humble picket shapes pull off a graphic effect when collaged en masse.
To allude to the nearby ocean, the architects designed a seaweed patterned for the interior of the garage door (seen here raised). It successfully reads like a leather padded wall and makes “the cube” feel that much more customized.