Ten Gallon House

In the case of this home the owners, two people with children from previous marriages, wanted to go up in order to accommodate their periodically quite large, combined family. There are typically three approaches a design could take. One could simply mimic the forms of a ranch house or try and reshape it to not look like a ranch or do something completely unrelated to the original house. All of these approaches have their drawbacks.

Instead, we opted for a different approach, one that accepted the fact that this addition would be an addition. The idea was to add to the existing home's design and re-route it in a new direction by adding to, not mimicking, or ignoring what was there.

The solution was to form the second story as a sort of hat that sits on top of the existing houses. The brim of the hat rests at the same level as the existing roof, but by interconnecting low sloping roof forms that echo the roof shape of the original house we created a surprisingly voluminous space for a large family. Additionally, the interior was opened up and modernized to fit the more informal nature of family life and domestic entertaining today. This also made the interior brighter and more inviting. In effect, we fit ten gallons of rooms and space into five gallons of hat.