The intervention sought to maximize the potential improvement of adding only 2 bedrooms and a bathroom in just 1000 square feet.  By locating the new structure directly in front of and on center with the existing house, an opportunity appeared to establish a volumetric hierarchy in the house.  Inspired by Palladio’s farm villas, here the head and wings motif lent an order to the composition, allowing the unsightly double-wide garage door to persist, while assigning it a smaller role in the elevation.

Elevating the required program to allow passage into the existing house created space for a loggia, a semi-public covered outdoor living space that opens to the front garden and the public space of the sidewalk and street.  Extending the concrete slab of the second floor out in front of the structure allowed for another dynamic space, a Caribbean inspired balcony, from which the children’s bedrooms open up to the canopies of the street trees and to the Biltmore tower, ideal for watching the ‘fireworks spectacular’ on the 4th of July.

type: addition of a head to a wing

Status: recently completed

location: coral gables, florida

area: addition of 1,000 sq ft