As Architects, a clean slate to do ANYTHING you want, is daunting... With soooo many ideas of what to do, it was amost necessary to give ourselves some boundaries. The best boundary for this site was to use the existing footprint, or at least close to it. Since the lot was a corner lot, there is technically, no REAR YARD. The 2 streets that front it are considered the PRIMARY FRONT and the SECONDARY FRONT. This means that with no REAR SETBACK REQUIREMENT, the house can be placed all the way to what would be considered the rear of the property and have a HUGE front yard... That was how the existing abandoned house was situated on the site, which after studying several design possibilities, was PERFECT!! We made the SIDE of the house, the FRONT, and the huge FRONT yard, the SIDE! Now that the siting was established, the design of the interior could begin... With all of our ideas of how we would live, and years of sketching ideas of what we would do if we were to ever be able to design our house, we began locating areas of the house in their ideal locations... Master bedroom with EAST facing windows, the LIVING area with large openings - facing NORTH, etc.
Eventually, we came up with what we have today... A contemporary, simple, geometric, volumetric and hopefully, affordable design! With the help of some VERY generous engineer's and close friends, Sudhir Gupta and Juan Fernandez, together we produced a set of construction documents, and submitted for permit on August 23, 2011.
I'm gonna live in THAT?! Awesome....
I'm gonna live in THAT?! Awesome....
