As any issue of Dwell proves, the choice of material or joinery method can transform a good project into a design for the ages. The Deep Dive is a forum where design and building pros can obsess over those details. Here we ask expert colleagues to share the inspiration behind house elements that delight clients—as well as the nitty-gritty information about how they were built.

Dwell has championed prefabricated housing from its beginning, and thanks to the magazine’s decades of reporting, it’s become common knowledge that one of the few design limitations on prefab is dimensional. Highway transportation prevents most factory-made modules from exceeding 16 by 60 feet in area or surpassing a height of about 12 feet.

But such parameters don’t necessarily stifle creativity. Sometimes, they redirect it, as demonstrated by Gabriele Mary Ann Schicketanz’s family compound featured in “This Multigenerational Home Near Carmel Is a Slice of Prefab Paradise.” Because lower-cost modular construction from Method Homes could only assume so many forms, the architect explained to feature writer Kelly Vencill Sanchez, “the magic would have to come from the site design.”

Mary Ann, principal and founder of Studio Schickentanz, first made sure to choose a site worthy of magic, by focusing her family’s search on a uniquely nature-loving planned community spanning 22,000 acres in the foothills southeast of Carmel. Most of the former ranch is held in conservancy, and the community’s commitment to landscape conservation informs its several hundred parcels. Their owners must follow rules like preserving approximately half of each lot for open space and avoiding construction underneath tree canopies.

Mary Ann opted for a property measuring nearly five acres that is accessed from the north. It features an oak whose canopy measures a magnificent 140 feet in diameter and, to the south of the ancient tree, a meadow bound on its west side by a small creek.

“The most obvious thing is to put a big house in the middle of the meadow,”Mary Ann says. “But what very often happens, then, is you take away exactly what you had loved most about the land.” Instead, the three-bedroom main house for her son Victor’s family and a freestanding one-bedroom ADU for herself are situated on the meadow’s edge. “Now we have this beautiful meadow to look on to.”

The ADU is separated from the main house by the sprawling oak tree that stands between them. To create more separation between herself and Victor and his wife Brittany, Mary Ann sited a freestanding garage to the north of the oak.

To enhance privacy between generations, Mary Ann was specific about where each structure was placed. “I skewed the plan so that my house is oriented to the meadow and the creek, and they’re oriented to the meadow and the mountain,” she says. Her ADU directs sightlines to the west and southwest, whereas the main house looks largely to the southwest and southeast; east-facing windows in both spaces cultivate morning light for the kitchen and primary bathroom spaces where it is most welcome. The stairstep-patterned footprint of each structure further contributes to the sense of seclusion, by artfully directing attention to the outdoor rooms created by the staggered volumes and blocking views across residences.

There were other ways to do this that may have been more cost-effective.“It would have been cheaper to have one big compact structure with a wing for the ADU and garage,” Mary Ann says, “You could build it all together, and you could have more economical utility runs.” She also could have consolidated the ADU and the garage in the accessory’s current location and erected the main house between the oak tree and the access road. These alternatives would have preserved the meadow and abided the community’s tree-canopy rules, sure. But, they would have also required windows facing to the unsunny north, which doesn’t necessarily align with the local climate, the best views, or even to Mary Ann’s philosophy of consumption. “Site drives design,” she says, adding, “I think it’s important to get back to smaller footprints and more efficient buildings, finding joy in the high quality of a buildout rather than square footage.”

Catch up on past installments of The Deep Dive at our online archive.