Courtney Wilk-Mandel and Danny Mandel had everything they wanted when they moved into their home in Los Angeles’s Mar Vista neighborhood in 2019. There was plenty of room for the two of them, easy proximity to both downtown and the beach, and a converted garage with a carport and a small office.

Things looked markedly different a year later: Courtney and Danny were both working from home because of the pandemic, and they had a baby on the way. Space was suddenly at a premium. “The house that had felt like a palace was no longer enough,” Courtney recalls. “We briefly looked at bigger homes, but decided to expand what we already had.”

Before: Front Facade

A mutual friend introduced them to Ben Warwas of the architectural design firm Byben. Having developed his aesthetic sensibility creating backyard skate ramps and streetwear before going on to earn his master of architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Warwas has a feel for innovative forms.

After: Front Facade

Here, he steered the couple away from adding on to their house and suggested they instead transform the garage into an ADU that could serve a variety of functions ranging from an office, to a hangout for themselves and their kids (their second son was born last year), to a place to entertain and host family and friends.

Before: Front Facade

Warwas designed the structure as a kind of folly that responds to the constraints of the site while serving as a whimsical companion to the existing residence. It offers something that the main house—a late 1940s structure that had undergone a top-to-bottom revise in 2014—doesn’t.

“Ben suggested we look at the ADU as an art piece or a sculpture, which we were very taken with,” says Courtney, who works as a nonprofit executive search consultant.

After: Front Facade

From the front, the ADU’s curved facade calls to mind the prow of a ship, while from the side, you can see the second level is staggered to accommodate the power lines that run along the rear of the property. That offset yields a bonus: a roof deck off the second-story office/guest bedroom.

Before: Side Facade

After: Side Facade

Between the buildings is a deck that Warwas designed to seamlessly connect them. “Being able to travel across the deck from the house’s living room to the ADU’s living room makes for a nice interaction between the spaces,” he says. “You can enter from the deck, but also from the yard, so there’s a circular movement between outside and inside, which creates the illusion that you have a much bigger property.”

“The buildings speak to one another,” says Danny, a real estate and land use attorney. “Our house has a pretty small living area, so to have an extension of that is really nice.”

The ADU, which was built by Chen Turgeman of Manchen Construction, is clad on two sides by an ipe rainscreen that provides additional air circulation to the walls. “It softens everything and plays into the curves and the surrealist concepts we were trying to create,” Warwas says.

The designer also played with shapes in the interior, where the color palette reinforces the building’s sense of whimsy. “The blue for the upper cabinets in the kitchen was Ben’s idea,” notes Courtney. “We probably wouldn’t do that in the house, but we thought we could be bolder and riskier with the ADU.”

The yellow stairwell, which Courtney describes as “a sunbeam,” emerged from Danny’s desire for additional color. Warwas was all in. “You have this small building, so how do you make it an experience?” he says. “It’s a fun, ‘wow’ moment.”

“There’s a playful aspect to my work,” says Warwas. “I want to create buildings that people want to live in, that put a smile on your face. Though I want the exterior to look like a piece of art, I want a building where people can live their lives.”

The ADU does that and then some. A Murphy bed enables the office to double as a guest room, while the closet beneath the stair is big enough for both a laundry area and toy storage. “It has a full kitchen, so we eat meals there pretty regularly,” says Danny.

In fact, the ADU has proved to be such a success that the couple have started competing for the use of the office. “At 6 a.m. we have a best of five rock, paper, scissors tournament for who gets to work out of the nice office upstairs,” quips Danny.

Courtney and Danny relish how the ADU has transformed the property. “We had some friends over recently, and the slider from the main house was open and the slider to the ADU was open, and the kids were running in and out,” says Courtney. “We realized that we’d finally gotten the indoor/outdoor life we wanted.”

More Before & After stories:

Once a Dingy Garage, This Charming Casita Is a Love Letter to Texas

A Gloomy San Francisco Garage Is Retooled as an English Cottage

The Brownstone Boys Overhaul a Brooklyn Garage Into a Family Home

Project Credits:

Architectural Designer: Byben / @ben_warwas

Interior Designer: Den Los Angeles / @denlosangeles

Builder: Manchen Construction / @manchenconstruction

Cabinets: Cabinets Quick

Appears In

Before & After: An Uninspired L.A. Garage Gets Turned Into a Surrealist ADU