What used to be an old garage is now a minimalist California guesthouse, courtesy of the San Francisco- and Oslo-based architecture studio of Casper Mork-Ulnes. Built on the footprint and foundation of its previous incarnation, Crest is a new Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) set on a leafy hillside of Marin County. The result? A compact home that elevates the experience of being in a pared-down vacation cabin through design.
Tour Crest: a new California guesthouse
Mork-Ulnes and his team worked on the little cabin's volume in a way that maximises views and the sense of space. The guesthouse features a sharply angled roofline that echoes the site's slope. It allows for a high clerestory window above the cabinetry wall, which floods the interior with light.
The structure is clad in cement board outside (used to provide a fire-resistant skin in the densely wooded hillside) and Douglas fir veneer plywood panelling inside. The material selection not only provides a sleek envelope for living, it also allows for ease of maintenance.
The just 38 sq m guesthouse also features a large glazed opening towards the site's long vistas, which draws back to open the interior completely to the outdoors, allowing guests to spill out onto a generous decked terrace overlooking the tree canopy beyond. Living space is maximised in a way that makes the most of California's mild climate and enhances the indoor/outdoor relationship.
A staircase leads up to the bedroom unit, which is located on a mezzanine. Below, a rolling kitchen island can be moved where it's needed – inside or outside. More adaptability is displayed in the murphy bed on the same level, which can be hidden in the wall during the day.
So successful was the design, it's already being used as a family home – albeit temporarily – the architects write: 'The ADU is currently being used by the owners as their vacation cabin while their main house is being renovated.'
-
‘Concrete Dreams’: rethinking Newcastle’s brutalist pastA new project and exhibition at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle revisits the radical urban ideas that changed Tyneside in the 1960s and 1970s
-
Mexican designers show their metal at Gallery Collectional, Dubai‘Unearthing’ at Dubai’s Gallery Collectional sees Ewe Studio designers Manu Bañó and Héctor Esrawe celebrate Mexican craftsmanship with contemporary forms
-
At The Manner, New York has a highly fashionable new living roomThe Manner, a new hopsitality experience by Standard International in the heart of SoHo, triples up as a hotel, private residence, and members’ club
-
On a sloped Los Angeles site, a cascade of green 'boxes' offers inside outside livingUnStack, a house by FreelandBuck, is a cascading series of bright green volumes, with mountain views
-
Tour a warm and welcoming modernist sanctuary set on the edge of a Los Angeles canyonThe Rustic Canyon Residence by Assembledge and Jamie Bush brings together the very best of mid-century influences, with an added slice of contemporary Californian craft and style
-
This New York brownstone was transformed through the power of a single, clever moveVoid House, a New York brownstone reimagined by architecture studio Light and Air, is an interior transformed through the power of one smart move
-
A new Texas house transforms a sloping plot into a multi-layered family homeThe Griggs Residence is a Texas house that shields its interior world and spacious terraces with a stone and steel façade
-
Light, nature and modernist architecture: welcome to the reimagined Longwood GardensLongwood Gardens and its modernist Roberto Burle Marx-designed greenhouse get a makeover by Weiss/Manfredi and Reed Hildebrand in the US
-
A bridge in Buffalo heralds a new era for the city's LaSalle ParkA new Buffalo bridge offers pedestrian access over busy traffic for the local community, courtesy of schlaich bergermann partner
-
Tour this Bel Vista house by Albert Frey, restored to its former glory in Palm SpringsAn Albert Frey Bel Vista house has been restored and praised for its revival - just in time for the 2025 Palm Springs Modernism Week Preview
-
First look: step inside 144 Vanderbilt, Tankhouse and SO-IL’s new Brooklyn projectThe first finished duplex inside Tankhouse and SO-IL’s 144 Vanderbilt in Fort Greene is a hyper-local design gallery curated by Brooklyn studio General Assembly
