Tag Archives: ADU

The Diamond ADU Is A Cedar-Clad Home Inspired By Farm Buildings

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Designed by American studio Schwartz and Architecture, this appealing cedar-clad ADU is part of a family estate in Sonoma, which is a historic town nestled in Northern California’s winemaking region. The home is intended to function as “a jumping-off point for a modern wine country design”. The entire property includes a main house, as well as multiple other buildings, each of them pulling in the attention of the onlookers. The ADU is designed to be demure from certain angles, and extremely lively from others.

Designer: Schwartz and Architecture

While designing the ADU, the architects were inspired by the farm structures found in Sonoma Valley, quite a few of which have a dilapidated appearance. “Their original, steeply sloped roofs are now drooping into low-slung structures, peeling apart, allowing in unexpected puddles of natural light, and revealing fragments of their interior framing to the outside elements,” said the team.

The inspiration from the farm structure led the architectural team to build a 1200-square-foot dwelling that includes two volumes consisting of a foyer and a sheltered patio. One of the volumes is shaped like a square, and it includes an open-plan communal space. While the other volume accommodates a bed and a bathroom. The exterior walls have been clad in an Alaskan yellow cedar with a unique weathered finish. The entire structure is built using mostly wood, with a couple of steel beams.

As you enter the ADU, you are welcomed by bright rooms, a neutral color palette, and warm earthly materials that make you feel at home. The flooring and kitchen cabinetry are built using European white oak, while the kitchen countertops are quartzite. The island is clad in the same cedar used in the exterior facades. A section of the roof has been sliced apart to create a linear skylight that spans the area between the public space to the bathroom.

“Neither an unconsidered ‘modern farmhouse’ nor the literal ruins of a de-constructing rural barn, we hope this modern country home feels alive – complete but always in process,” said the team.

The post The Diamond ADU Is A Cedar-Clad Home Inspired By Farm Buildings first appeared on Yanko Design.

Adaptable ADUs Starting at $38K Come In A Diverse Range of Models & Can Be Built In 100 Days

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Architects Ignacio de la Vega and Pilar Cano-Lasso created Tini Living around five years ago. Tini Living is a prefab company that’s come up with five models of ADUs in an effort to provide their customers with as much transparency as possible. “We wanted to create something simple and elegant, but we also wanted clients to know exactly what they were getting the cost, and the timing from the very first meeting,” said de la Vega. And, what makes their ADUs even more unique and fabulous is that they can be completed in 100 days!

Designer: Tini Living

Tini Living offers a range of ADUs to meet the diverse needs of their diverse customers. They provide an entire range of standalone, prefab modules and an extra small version called the Tini XS which starts at $38,000. The Tini XS is one of their popular models, and it is perfectly suited for two people. It includes a kitchen, bed frame, full bathroom, and a hot and cold air pump within 180 square feet.

They start off with a design phase, in which the clients can make their own personalized changes and small adaptations to the module of their choice. Once the plan is finalized, they aim to complete the construction of the ADU within 150 days, and delivery within 30 days. By keeping construction and delivery time to a minimum, Tini Living aims to offer its clients flexibility and provide reduced economic burdens as compared to traditional homes.

In terms of pricing, Tini Living maintains a transparent attitude, where they offer the client as much information as possible before the process begins. They have created a unique customization tool, which allows them to alter and adapt their different models to the personal needs and requirements of their clients. The company also partners up with local architecture and engineering firms, to ease and smoothen up the entire process, and to provide a cohesive and coordinated process. They also work with a third party to ensure that all the local requirements and regulations are met and followed at the site.

The post Adaptable ADUs Starting at $38K Come In A Diverse Range of Models & Can Be Built In 100 Days first appeared on Yanko Design.

Adorable Little ADU Resembles A Birdhouse While Tackling The Housing Crunch In Austin,Texas

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Did you know that according to recent reports Austin, Texas has become one of the most expensive places to live in the United States of America? In such a scenario, accessory dwelling units could be the way to go, and this adorable-looking compact corrugated accessory dwelling called the Birdhouse is a brilliant option!

Designed by North Arrow Studio, the Birdhouse is a minimal bright white structure with a modest footprint that somehow manages to span over two floors. The home occupies 84 square meters and shares a 550 square meter lot with a 1939 single-story house, and three massive pecan trees. “This design protects and celebrates the three large protected pecan trees adjacent to the building. The small building footprint has less impact on the land and tiptoes around the critical root zones of these trees. The courtyard and the home utilize the surrounding tree canopies for additional shade and privacy,” said the studio.

Pros:

  • The home is strategically placed around the pecan trees to create a cozy courtyard
  • Features round windows, making it resemble a birdhouse

Cons:

  • The entryway with it’s 3 round windows restricts the light coming in from that side

Designer: North Arrow Studio

The exterior of the home is dominated by its corrugated steel cladding, which imparts it with a rather tactile quality. Since it is quite a sustainable material, corrugated metal was chosen and used to build the roof and siding, making the envelope of the house 100 percent recyclable. The second-story main suite features a double vaulted ceiling which makes the roof framed, providing less ‘attic’ insulation space, hence corrugated metal was an excellent choice in repelling heat during the hot summers. The entire home is marked with large windows, which provide the home with its birdhouse-like resemblance and quirky name.

The interior of the home is warm and cozy, with the living room providing a break from the hectic city life and noise on the outside. The home features a small and functional kitchenette with three round windows that allow natural light to stream into the interior. The ground floor accommodates the bathroom, which is minimalist in nature, except for the fire engine red tiles. The bedroom is on the upper story and has a really spacious feel owing to its double-vaulted roof. A reading nook is tucked away under one of the apexes of the roof. A 5-foot round window in the bedroom can be opened, letting in fresh air.

Though the Birdhouse had a pretty tight budget, the studio did a tremendous job in creating a cozy, functional, and well-equipped ADU that feels much larger than it really is, allowing to serve as a small solution to the rising cost of living in Austin, Texas.

The post Adorable Little ADU Resembles A Birdhouse While Tackling The Housing Crunch In Austin,Texas first appeared on Yanko Design.

Dwell unveils a minimalistic one-bedroom ADU that seems to be straight out of its home page

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Since the start of the millennium, Dwell has brought us great designs to improve our way of life and managed to forge itself as a strong voice in the matters of architecture. For the past 20 years, the American publication has been providing us with cues and inspo to design our own dream home, and finally, they’re actually presenting it to us on a golden platter! They’ve drawn on their decades-long experience to bring to us their very own ‘Dwell House’. Simply put, the Dwell House is a 540-square-foot ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit), built in collaboration with Adobu, whose beautiful tiny homes have impressed us time and again.

Designer: Dwell x Adobu x Norm Architects

Dwell describes the house as “a California-meets-Copenhagen combination of light-filled spaces and Scandinavian simplicity”. If you closely observe the home, it looks much like the structures that are featured daily on Dwell’s home page. A gabled roof, cedar facade, Scandinavian-inspired interiors, and classic white kitchen cabinets bring to mind many of the tiny homes we often devour on the pages of Dwell, and fantasize as our own homes someday. The one-bedroom ADU is constructed off-site, and effortlessly transported to your property – all thanks to Adobu. It features a bedroom, a full bathroom, a sizable kitchen outfitted with Bosche appliances, and a 12-foot folding glass wall.

Norm Architects played a vital role as well, designing the home with careful consideration and precise attention to detail. Their main goal was to ensure the home is ‘functional’, rather than flashy or extravagant. Expanses of glass were incorporated into the home to create an open and spacious space, that encourages indoor-outdoor living. The star feature of the home is the 12-foot glass wall (custom made by NanaWall), which quite literally folds and unfolds, connecting indoor and outdoor spaces harmoniously. Durable and sustainable cedar-wood side walls are featured in the home – you can pick a natural or a black finish.

“We introduced the Dwell House because we not only want to cover design that responds to contemporary life — we want to make it a reality out there in the world,” said the magazine’s Editor-in-chief William Hanley. “ We want people to be able to add more well-designed space to their homes in the easiest possible way. The design part is key, and it’s where Dwell’s expertise comes in. We’ve seen hundreds of ADU plans over the years, and we know what works and what doesn’t. And with Norm Architects we’ve had a great partner in turning that expertise into a home that’s thought through down to every detail — and it also looks great in any backyard.”

Designed to be versatile and flexible – the home can serve as an amazing guest house, office, home gym, or even a pool house! Of course, it could also function as your primary home, or as an extension of your home. The Dwell House can fit perfectly into your backyard if you’re ready to fish out $389,000. The price tag could be considered hefty, but if you’re bored of the same old ADUs that often look like tool sheds or spaceships, then the Dwell House is a great bet for you!

The post Dwell unveils a minimalistic one-bedroom ADU that seems to be straight out of its home page first appeared on Yanko Design.

This tiny unit answers LA’s housing shortage with an ADU featuring a garden terrace!

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Two things you’re sure to find in LA are lines of stucco houses and a whole lot of false fronts– still talking about houses. Dubbed the “Los Angeles architectural mainstays,” stucco houses and false fronts are so intrinsic to the landscape of LA that Jennifer Bonner, founder of MALL, designed an affordable housing program for the city’s Standard Plan Pilot project in their image. Conceptualized as a reinterpretation of the backyard, all-American lean-to shed, Bonner’s program called Lean-to ADU (Accessory Dwelling Units) currently stands as a viable housing program for the city’s overwhelming housing shortage.

Two main parts give rise to Bonner’s Lean-to ADUs, an exaggerated, textured black stucco and metal shed roof that sits atop the unit’s cubic white stucco box. The shape of lean-to sheds derives from the mono-pitch roof that’s typical of lean-to structures and their name comes from the fact that the interior lean-to rafters literally lean on the primary structure of the building for support. When viewed from east and west elevations, each unit’s roof maintains the shape of a conventional right triangle, while the south-facing facade showcases a black rectangular panel that leads to the rooftop terrace stationed behind the home’s exaggerated false front. Situated behind tall black stucco fronts and hardly visible from the street, the garden terrace maintains an air of privacy atop the 515-square-foot living space.

While the home’s black-and-white stucco exterior will look just the part for the backyards of Los Angeles, each unit’s interior finds warmth from natural sunlight that floods through the home’s pitched roof, mellowing out the unit’s soft palette of plywood and colorful pops of marble tile work. Upon entering Bonner’s Lean-to ADU, residents find communal spaces like the living, dining, and cooking areas on one side while a bedroom and working area finds space on the other side. Separating the communal areas from the private spaces, the unit’s bathroom and utility closet is contained in a center rectangular volume. Outside, native California plants comprise a geometric garden outlined in wavy metal edgers to complement the Lean-to ADU’s cubic form.

Designer: Jennifer Bonner, MALL, Martin Rickles Studio

From east and west elevations, the Lean-to ADUs reveal a traditional triangular-shaped roof.

Facing the home from its south side, a rectangular-shaped panel leads the way to the home’s rooftop terrace.

Thanks to the home’s exaggerated false front, the rooftop terrace can remain private.

The kitchen features “a marble slab counter with yellow, green, and white cabinets, while [its] floors are bone and ash, ceilings are plywood, and tactile details punctuate throughout,” as described by MALL.

Depending on the chosen floor plan, different areas can be devoted to working or leisure.

The unit’s center rectangular volume separates the communal spaces from the private areas, keeping the bathroom and utility closet there as well.

One facade showcases a classic mono-roof pitch structure.

From the other side, a mono-pitch roof evokes the unit’s false front, which keeps the rooftop terrace hidden from view.