Two interior courtyards and a new outbuilding are wrapped around an existing contemporary home. There were several programmatic elements that needed to be included- a formal entry sequence to the house, a covered parking space, a screened porch, and a rock garden. The house is sited roughly perpendicular to a tree covered ravine that affords spectacular views and cool breezes into the home and the courtyard / screen porch. Our concept was to design a connecting element to link all programmatic pieces together- the resulting bench serves as a place sit and enjoy the rock garden, provides firewood storage for the screen porch fireplace, and serves as a rain collector and diverter for the chain drain originating on the adjacent house.
