They lived 3 years in a basement Then built their dream backyard home

Hi. Oh, there you are. Hi. It's beautiful back here. This is the front house. We used to live in the basement over there. Was it always the plan to move into the basement when you bought it? Yeah, when we were touring the house, the property was more than we could afford at that point. We had to stretch a little bit. We realized that we can separate the basement from the rest of the house. And we stretched our budget, but we know that we can dream of building something new in the backyard. So here's the door to the rest of the house to the upper floor. This is how we live. Bedroom over there. It just worked perfectly for us. It's only 300 square feet. This is where we work. So you took what was once a storage basement for the people who lived before? Yeah, but they enclosed the garage. We just put some cabinets and a fridge over here. We have full storage on the staircase, which is kind of cool. So you were able to rent out the upstairs and make saves in order to build this? Right. So this had been a garage, and then storage, and then basement? Right. And then you made it into your home for how many years? For more than three years. What type of bathtub is that? It's a Japanese soaking tub. It can sit on a shower pan or just on the floor like that. It's the tiniest bathtub that we could find. So it really made you to do some space. So you get the idea that you really were in incubation, waiting to build what was going to be really well suited for you. Right. This is what we have for the backyard back then. When we lived here, we realized that we crave for greenery space. We live in a super small space. As long as we have an opening out to the nature, to light, to breeze, it's just a relief. And we want this to be kept for our family who are going to live here in the front house as well. So that's why we designed the ADU a way that we still have front yard and backyard for the front house. This is the main house. So this is the path from the front to the ADU. This is a way that we play with contrast. The new thing that we start is from this line. And we create a kind of narrow path just to be considered for the front house, but also just to play with contrast. If we make this narrow, then when we get inside, we'll feel wider. So the narrower we feel right now, the wider we'll feel later. So the approach is important. It's not just the house. It's the context. Yeah. How did you play off the fact that you have an apartment next door? One of our design strategies is also give the buffer zone. That's why we pushed our form on this side. And also we want to keep everything minimal so that the house kind of blends into the background of the apartment. We also consider how to bring privacy to the main house. And we want to keep the ADU really minimal and just a minimal material wall. So when we were in the basement, we were able to look outside and see how sun and shadow kind of dance on the surface. And it just gives us joy. And I would say, although we live in a very tight urban context, but we still be able to reach out to the nature. The kids used to live here, but one was like three years old when they moved in. He was this small and we couldn't see him because he's smaller than the window. Until he showed up at the door. So we make good friends with the families that have lived here. After the narrow path, we arrive at the destination. And suddenly we want to be open to bring the contrast of narrow and wide. So this bridge is kind of the heart of the ADU. So the house, the ADU has two volumes, one for the office, one for living. And the bridge is the centerpiece that connects two volumes together. Leon will say whenever he walks through. This is our commute. That's where we live. This is where we work. And this is the commute route in the morning. It's only 10 feet away. It's kind of nice to walk and see open space on both sides. This feels like being outdoors, actually. It's a nice commute, actually. It's not bad. No traffic ever. So this side is the living space. The size of the living space is quite similar to the basement. Because you realized that was enough space. Exactly. So here's, yeah, commute and come to our office. It's such a feeling of calm in here. Yeah, that's what we were looking for. And I don't know if you notice rhythm structurally. But we also want to have some rhythm to bring peace and calm in a space. From this side, you can see the rhythm of opening. Rhythm of structure that repeating by layers and layers. We have repeated size of windows. Repeated form for the space. This little wall that create a language. When we pass through the space, it's not just a box of room. But it has multiple layers that we can pass through. So right here, we have the rhythm of a scale, repeated scale of the windows. Now it's repeated in form of doors. So again, when we pass through, we know that we pass through few feet. There's a threshold in between the space. Same here, we can feel the rhythm of cabinets, of panels. This is to hide a fridge. There's a fridge inside. We also hide a coat closet here. Shoes, closet, same thing. Yeah, it has some rhythm in it. So here, the wood panel wrap. The kitchen storage for us. It's also hide the bathroom door. And then bedroom door. Pocket bedroom door here. When you open inside, it's pretty small. We want to keep it quiet. So this is drywall and this is Corian. So it blends in seamlessly. This is waterproof. And the tub? When we live in the basement, we test out and it works perfectly for us. So it really makes sense that you lived in the basement. Now I'm seeing that you really could experiment with size. Right, it's a great test for us. When we need more than space, a feeling of emptiness, of clearance, of calm and peace. And realize that all that will be given to us through nature. So nature is again a very important factor. So every room will have an opening to look outside, including this bedroom. It's kind of like a getaway. It's quiet, that helps. But it's also the quiet of the things. Objects to look at. All objects are put away. Now I'm noticing there's not a wall, right? Yeah, that's the storage space. We also learned that from living in a garage, we can just have a screen to cover things. Since we moved here, we didn't buy much stuff. We used the same storage space that we used before. So you actually have more space than you need. Yeah, we still have some. We find little corners just to keep things tidy. This is a pocket door. It closes up the bedroom. Oh, so now it feels different. Yeah, it's a complete bedroom. We want to have everything stay in the background. So one of the details that we created is hiding the pockets for the shade. So again, it doesn't intrude into the cleanliness or the minimalistic of the space. This is the second screen for a protector for moving light. Did you have any experience with this type of home growing up? Did you live in something that felt this way? It's not completely the same. But in Vietnam or Ho Chi Minh City, we often have a lot of coffee shops, like courtyard coffee shops. They always find a little nook. And the weather was so warm and nice in Vietnam, so people were outdoors most of the time. So yeah, I always crave the feeling of just sitting down in a quiet space, being in between the trees. Space like this. It's a good environment to quiet our mind, so we feel less attached to the things that we own, but appreciate more of the sun, the light just pass by, and nature keeps changing over time. This is another part of the property. And you can see from here that if we go higher, then this space will feel even narrower. So we strategically choose the shape of the roof this way, so we can still have the high ceiling inside, but outside we don't feel that much of the bulky volume of building. When we found this space, I said, oh, green, beautiful backyard. We really want to be considerate for how people around us feel about the space between us, and give some respect and give some harmony. And at that point, we think that we don't want to throw a bulky, big building. This is another niche. Originally, we thought we could lift this roof up to give more space, but it's a trade-off. When we raise that roof, we're going to get more shadow to the courtyard, so at some point we think this is enough. So this could be an extra bedroom? Yes, it's like a guest room. Great. What do you use for the floor here? It's cork. Cork floor. So here you kept an opaque window. Right. It sits right to the neighbor. This side, we were optimistic that this could be a terrace to go out to stargazing, but it turned out that it's too close to the neighbor. It's only this view, I think, where you feel that closeness to the neighbors. Yeah, we try to stay out of people's view. This one, a strategic way of not seeing the neighbor, and the neighbor won't see us from above, so we just enough of opening for working on this surface location. This is a hardware very popular in Europe for locked spaces. What is it? A bracket mounting. Locked into place, so there's no way that it can slide. But then it takes up no space, so you're able to... It's sort of like in a ship, everything has to be... And you have that feeling that you're surrounded by, in a ship it would be water, but here you're surrounded by the greenery. You're kind of floating in... A different type of water. We use the material so that the ladder kind of blends into the wood panel. We want to make this more like a piece of furniture instead of a wall. So it's like a piece of furniture floating around in between two rooms. So the kitchen is pretty small, so we utilize this as a storage. It doesn't feel like a wall because it's a cabinet, obviously. On this side, we want it to be expanded out to the outside. In every room, we want to have something beyond that room. So this is like a no-name space in between, but it gives so much significance. People often just measure or value a house with number of rooms, how big the room is, how big the house is. But sometimes the space that has no name or the buffer zone surrounding is actually more valuable. We don't have a dining room, but especially in the summer, we often have guests or friends coming out here. We have a foldable table that comes out here. So this is our formal dining space. And in California, most of the year, really. Yeah. This is a multifunctional room, obviously. The desk is for working on the computer. This here is for sketching, building models. So we want to treat a space like something that not just by itself, but a space beyond it. So like if I walk here, the space beyond is when I turn left, I can see greenery, space beyond, and then the gate beyond. So we can see activity outside the street, like someone come, guests coming. Or I can turn to the back and see this relief. So up there, there's also another layer or space beyond that we can have. So we can actually borrow the greenery from the neighbors. And hopefully our greenery also serve well to other people. Beside bringing light, this window also creates cross ventilation. So we have north-facing lower window down there. In the summer, we just open here and the cool air will go up. And then when we open the south side, the warm air can just vent out. We're talking about light, wind, ventilation, breeze. All immaterial things, but it gives us a lot of joy and comfort. So this is a simple ladder, an ivory ladder. You can slide to the track on this side or the left side. Do you want some more coffee? Not too good? Sometimes emptiness can feel scary, like having nothing. Are you okay with milk in the coffee? Some people, they have a room, they always want to look at something in that room to feel complete. And we try to convince them to let it be. Just let some relief, just have some space beyond it. You can contemplate on, instead of keep putting stuff right in front of it. I don't know if I sound too OCD, but the bamboo actually has some rhythm in it, like the vertical rhythm. Probably that's why people feel very calm looking at the bamboo or trees, basically. Nature changes, so light changes direction, shadows also change, so through time we feel the space differently. So right now you feel the space quite differently from one hour ago. It has more light, it's a little bit warmer, it has more texture on the shade because of the shadow. Things keep changing. I feel I'm more in tune with nature, thanks to that. Well, to me it's very clear that in this property the ADU is very much superior to the main house. I have the feeling that this house is probably taking more advantage of the place here than the house. I think because it's really customised into the existing context and our own need. The front house is probably mass-producing, so they just put the house or the floor plan at the same place for different properties. But this is unique because it's designed specifically for this site. We actually respect the work of that time. So for us, timeless work is suitable for that time or that period of time. Without need today or this period of time, it's just suitable for us, for our own necessity. So yeah, we won't change things like that existing house, which was perfect for other families in the past and smaller families over there. But for us as a designer, working from home is the option that we will hope for.