The lives of Courtney Wilk-Mandel and Danny Mandel have changed considerably in five years. In 2019, the newly married couple purchased a single-story home with a backyard in Los Angeles’s Mar Vista that felt cavernous after their small apartment in Silver Lake. A small backyard with a one-car garage in the corner was the cherry on top. The novelty, however, only lasted a couple of months. Shortly after the pandemic kept them indoors, the birth of their first child, Remy, transformed their once-spotless floor into a maze of toys. The playful design and colorful renderings produced by local architecture firm Byben matched the whimsy of the family’s newest member—while also maintaining the functionality required to double their living space.
Following a year of back-and-forth, they decided on a dramatic conversion, turning the one-car garage that sat in the corner of the backyard into a two-story ADU. This enables the new structure to stand alone as a sculptural object while still remaining in dialogue with the old.
From the street, the vertical ipe wood slats that wrap around the facade poke out above the roofline of the main house. From the backyard, the subtle color variations of the slats provide a calming backdrop for outdoor family time. But the real kicker is the ADU’s quirky offset.
Read more about the ADU on aninteriormag.com.
