LOS ALTOS, CA
181 Alvarado Avenue
This traditional 4,600 square foot two-story home with basement we designed for a family that loved to entertain both family and overseas guests but also desired enough space for their small children to play separately indoors. The architectural style of this 4 bedroom 4 ½ bath home incorporates large roof forms and formal architectural details inspired by French eclectic American prototypes.
The front of the house includes three steep pitched gable roof forms and an arched front covered entry element with a metal seam accent roof, which creates a balanced and an interesting street elevation. The driveway and the three-car garage is oriented to face the side yard, which gives the home a larger separation from the neighboring property and minimizes the appearance of the garage when viewed from the street. Located beneath the home is the basement level that overlooks its own exterior subterranean lower terrace with a staircase leading upward to the main level back yard.
Because of the city’s zoning restrictions on the maximum allowable height of the building we used nine-foot-tall walls on the first story and eight-foot-tall walls on the second story to create lower eave lines in an effort to reduce the verticality and overall vertical mass of the home but still offering to the eye of the visitor, a structure that is appropriately scaled for its architectural style.
RESIDENTIAL
ARCHITECTURE