Our brief for this project was to re-work two areas of the house interior, improve the connection to the backyard, and to add a pergola to the back terrace and a new informal dining terrace the lawn near the pool.

Inside the house, our clients wanted to expand their dining room to accomotate dinner parties of up to 14. The existing dining room would fit 6, 8 in a squeeze. We couldn't expand to the left or right so we stretched the room out into the backyard creating a long, narrow dining room. Lifting the ceiling and adding ceiling beams and skylights made the space work. Inventive lighting sourced by our clients added a dramatic flare and a bit of an underwater feeling. The dining room is frequently used and as our client reports, it functions perfectly!

Opposite the dining room across the lounge, we made a similar addition to create a functional home office. Again, we couldn't expand to the sides so we expanded out to match the massing of the dining room. In this case instead of lifting the ceiling we added some very large skylights to bring even light into this space. Our clients selected a cool paper-backed glass to fit in the stained wood frames. Again, this created peacefull under-water feel, hence our name for the project the "Ranch Aquatic".

Outdoors, we designed a shaded outdoor conversation area in the new space between office and dining, and added a circular patio for informal outdoor dining by the pool. The aquatic theme - again.