Crest Guesthouse / Mork-Ulnes Architects

closed

Designing for the utmost effective square feet (411 sq. ft. / 38 square meters), flexible programming was deployed: a rolling kitchen island can be moved in or outside when space or utility is needed, and a Murphy bed hides in the wall during the day and folds down at night for sleeping. The loft space, with a window out towards the trees and down to the living space, is accessed by a ladder that tucks into the wall.The bathroom is split into two smaller rooms – a toilet/sink and a forest-green tiled shower room with a glass door out to the tree-covered hillside. The ADU is currently being used by the owners as their vacation cabin while their main house is being renovated.Text description provided by the architects.To create a small guesthouse and rental unit on a steep hillside property in Marin County CA, Mork-Ulnes Architects took the foundation from an old garage. They built a new Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) on the exact footprint of the old garage.The building’s sharply angled roofline mirrors the site's slope and gives a high clerestory window light above the cabinetry wall, while a playful flip in the roof provides a punched window from the loft viewing the trees. Cement board was used to provide a fire resistant cladding in the wooded hillside, and also for ease of maintenance. Due to the incredibly steep hillside, a deck was added on the front of the ADU to add more usable exterior space to take advantage of the mild California climate, essentially doubling the ADU’s usable area.