About
bau10 architecture rebuilt a detached garage in Venice, California as a two story structure with an accessory dwelling unit stacked on top of it. The clients, a young family of four on a 4,200 square foot lot, came to the firm in 2016 asking for parking, storage, and a playroom above. What they ended up with is a garage with glass on two sides and a rentable studio apartment above it.
The original garage was a monolithic stucco box sitting in the middle of the backyard, and the brief treated it as the problem rather than an opportunity. bau10 rebuilt within the same footprint and opened the ground floor with large sliders facing the courtyard. The 1971 Volkswagen Type 2 Westfalia camper parked inside is visible from the main house, from the courtyard table, and straight through to the alley when both sides are open. The garage stopped reading as storage and started reading as part of the outdoor room.
The apartment above is what made the rest of it work. California's ADU ordinance took effect on January 1, 2017, partway through design, and the firm proposed converting the planned playroom into a habitable unit that could host visiting family and generate rent against the cost of construction. The ordinance also reduced the parking requirement and cut rear setbacks to five feet, which is the only reason a build this dense fits the lot at all.
Project Name: Coeur D'Alene
Location: Venice, Los Angeles, California
Architect: bau10 architecture
Year Built: 2019
Photographer: Paul Vu
Garage Overview
Type: Detached two story garage with an accessory dwelling unit above
Project Size: 960 sq ft across two levels
Site Size: 4,200 sq ft
Building Levels: 2
Garage: Single bay, concrete floor, full height glass sliders on the courtyard side and the alley side
Flooring: Sealed concrete slab
Key Materials: Acetylated wood slat rain screen in Accoya pine and Tricoya MDF, FSC and Cradle to Cradle certified, prefinished with no onsite finish
Vehicles: 1971 Volkswagen Type 2 Westfalia camper
Notable Features: Second floor cantilevers over the garage, ceiling mounted overhead storage rack, backlit modulated courtyard wall, EV charging station, plywood lined rear wall
Sustainability: Two 130 gallon rain barrels, 100 sq ft of vegetated landscape, ductless heat pump, tankless water heater, solar ready conduit to the roof, low VOC materials
Photos
Architectural Details
A Garage With Glass on Two Sides
The move that defines this garage is subtraction. Where the old structure met the backyard with a solid stucco wall, the new one meets it with sliders that run nearly the full width of the bay. Open them and the concrete slab, the gravel courtyard, and the lawn cohesively operate as one continuous surface. The Westfalia sits in the middle of it, lit from above at night, closer to a display case than a parking spot.
The garage level was also set to line up with the existing openings of the main house, so the sightline from the residence runs across the courtyard and into the garage rather than stopping at a wall. That coordination is easy to miss and expensive to get wrong.
The Acetylated Wood Slat Rain Screen
The exterior is a vertical slat rain screen in Accoya pine and Tricoya MDF, both modified through an acetylation process that hardens the wood and stabilizes it dimensionally. The result resists insects and weather without the copper and biocides used in pressure treatment, which matters a few blocks from the ocean. Both products carry FSC and Cradle to Cradle certification.
Visually the slats do the work a flat panel could not. They give the volume depth and a shifting shadow line through the day, and the second floor wall facing the main house, which has no windows for privacy reasons, is modulated and backlit so the courtyard gets a lantern instead of a blank elevation. The same instinct to let the enclosure carry the design shows up in an English garage built around air cooled Volkswagens and Porsches, where a laterally sliding oak door does the heavy lifting.
How the ADU Ordinance Made the Garage Possible
This is a project about density as much as it is about cars. The lot is zoned R2 but too small to satisfy parking and fire access for a second full residence. The ADU path required one additional parking space instead of two and reduced the rear setback from roughly fifteen feet to five, which is what left room for a garden the kids could actually use.
The apartment is a single studio with the bedroom separated from the living area by a freestanding shelving divider, and a kitchen counter running along the stair. It is reached only from the alley, with every window turned away from the main house. The two structures never overlook each other, which is what allows the courtyard between them to stay open. It is a similar logic to a Japanese house that folds the garage into the living space, where the constraint of a small urban lot produces the best ideas in the plan.