This guest house and artist studio is an addition to the Client’s Spanish style residence dating back to the 1920s.
The two buildings combine to create a stimulating juxtaposition of contemporary and traditional design. The scale and architecture of each is emboldened and strengthened by the other, with each building being an authentic contemporaneous symbol of its era.
The site is located on the periphery of the residential zone. The studio structure stitches the fabric of the city by making the transition from the non-confrontational and familiar residential zone to the hard edged aesthetics of the commercial zone.
The studio is a large two story space with a high, north facing translucent wall, bringing in diffused even light. The clean lines of the space are the perfect foil for the cheerful, vivid-hued beachscape oil created by artist-in-residence Ken Reiter. A long sliding glass wall opens from the studio into a private walled sculpture garden.
The guest house sits above and is interlocked with the studio, it expresses itself as a cantilevered cube cloaked in a matrix of modern materials, perched above a mangaris deck which continues to become the garden wall facing the street. The dark gray stucco box affords its occupants surprising vistas in all directions.