Lighten Up

2 MIN READ

Lighten Up It can be a struggle to make the garage look good. A multi-car structure, especially if it’s streetside, can overpower the main event—the owners’ home. How to resolve the disparity between a big garage and a house scaled for humans? The designers of the three projects shown here shed a little light on the problem.

Beacon Hill “The L.A.P.D. helicopter pilots use this garage as a bearing point at night,” chuckles Brian Murphy, who designed this luminescent garage for a homeowner who wanted to make a statement. Clad in white corrugated fiberglass, the three-car garage/gym is a beacon on its private hilltop site overlooking downtown Los Angeles. A single bulb lights up the building, which also buffers the house from the road and shapes its distinct entryway. Builder: Homeowner; Architect: BAM Construction Design, Los Angeles; Photographer: Tim Street-Porter.

Roof Beam For this remote retreat overlooking Lake Michigan, architect Brian Johnsen designed a garage that doesn’t distract from the verdant setting. Locating the garage remotely wasn’t an attractive option in an area with occasional 20-below days. Instead Johnsen sited the structure front and center and designed it to give arrivals a warm welcome. A shed roof set over a glowing band of polycarbonate glazing hovers above the garage’s concrete block and board-and-batten walls. Together with a long trellised walkway, the semi-detached garage produces a courtyard car park that takes a back seat to the natural surroundings. Builder: Ruvin Brothers: Artisans and Trades, Milwaukee; Architect: Johnsen Schmaling Architects, Milwaukee; Photographer: Doug Edmunds Studios.

Open Port Made of Brazilian redwood slat walls and a corrugated steel roof, this structure is “really a carport with a garage door,” explains architect Christopher Cobb. Polygal panels in the garage door maintain the building’s open feeling. The material is transparent but views are blurred by integrated ribbing that also adds rigidity. The house sits a block behind a hip urban retail area, and Cobb used the 600-square-foot garage as an obstacle between the busy alley it opens to and the house. Builder: Pilgrim Building, Austin, Texas; Architect: CF Architecture, Austin; Project architect: Camille Jobe, Urban Jobe Architecture, Austin; Photographer: Thomas McConnell.

About the Author

Shelley D. Hutchins

Shelley D. Hutchins, LEED AP, writes about residential construction and design, sustainable building and living, and travel and health-care issues.

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