Overlook Guest House, Los Gatos Building, Santa Clara County Home, Californian Architecture Images

Overlook Guest House in Los Gatos

Indoor Outdoor Dwelling, CA, United States design by Schwartz and Architecture, Architects

Feb 23, 2016

Location: Los Gatos, Santa Clara County, California, USA (just south of San Francisco)

Design: Schwartz and Architecture

Photos by Matthew Millman

Overlook Guest House

Despite an extremely steep, almost undevelopable, wooded site, the Overlook Guest House strategically creates a new fully accessible indoor/outdoor dwelling unit that allows an aging family member to remain close by and at home.

Designing a fully accessible new home for a mobility-impaired aging in-law on a steep and wooded hillside site requires a highly efficient and site sensitive footprint, already both hallmarks of good sustainable design.

This 2-bedroom, 775 sq ft home employs a low-impact drilled pier foundation system to perch the structure delicately on this steep site; balancing cut and fill while maximizing views and an expansive feel. With much of the small interior spaces being allocated to accessibility and movement, it becomes a design imperative to capture exterior space as part of the functional portion of the home.

A seamless transition between interior and exterior environment is amplified by a single floor slab and overhead plane that unite the residential wing and the opposing garage of the home. The resulting covered area increases the usable floor area using a minimum of building resources. A prominent roof oculus within this covered “courtyard” space provides for a dynamic interior / exterior space directly adjacent to indoor living space as well as promotes a cooling air flow through the often harsh micro-climate of the site.