Originally designed by Ralph Rapson, FAIA (1914 – 2008), the owners required additional living space and book storage for their 1960’s era home. They requested a thoughtful integration of interior space with the surrounding Japanese garden and a sensitive approach to the original architecture.
Linking an external garage to the original house allows for a library space to inhabit the footprint of the former garage. Inside the library, new fenestrations emphasize an initiate connection with the garden outside.
The new garage embraces a landscaped courtyard, allowing the entry sequence to unfold, thus revealing the link between the old and the new. The link – a glass void – gives visual connection from one garden to the next.
At the garage, a cedar rain screen presents an ordered skin that reinterprets the taut regularity of the home’s original tongue-and-groove redwood. Like the old siding, the cedar is untreated and will weather over time, uniting the new with the old.
