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Atelier NorthSarasota · Design-Build
Live Oak Guest Wing concept project — A separate wing for family visits, held apart from the house by a shaded walk.

Addition · Lakewood Ranch · 2023

Live Oak Guest Wing

Project brief

A separate wing for family visits, held apart from the house by a shaded walk.

Concept work. This project is a fictional portfolio concept — the client, location detail, ranges, and results are invented to illustrate how the studio works.

The owners host grandchildren for long stretches and wanted proper guest accommodation that did not require anyone to tiptoe past a bedroom door. The addition had to defer to the existing house from the street and read as its own quiet object from the garden.

Location
Lakewood Ranch
Scope
760 sq ft guest wing, shaded terrace, garden wall
Concept investment
Concept range: $420,000 – $495,000
Duration
11 months, design through completion

The design challenge

A protected live oak sat squarely in the logical location, and the rear setback left just under fourteen feet of buildable depth at the narrowest point. Drainage on the site also ran toward the proposed foundation line.

The solution

The wing pivots off the rear corner of the house to slip past the oak's protected root zone, connected by a shaded, glazed walk rather than a corridor. The narrow depth became the organising idea: a single-aspect plan with a full-length terrace, which reads as a garden pavilion instead of a bolt-on. A shallow limestone swale redirects site drainage around the new foundation.

Material palette

What the house is made of

  • Vertical cedar cladding

    Left to weather to a silver-gray

  • Coquina limestone

    Garden walls, swale, and terrace paving

  • Olive-gray steel

    Terrace columns and the connecting walk structure

  • Whitewashed cypress

    Interior ceiling and built-in bed wall

  • Blackened hardware

    Doors, pulls, and exterior lighting

Hover or focus a material to read its specification note.

Annotated gallery

Live Oak Guest Wing in detail

  • Cedar-clad guest wing addition beside an existing coastal house with a shell path
    01The wing pivots off the rear corner to clear the protected oak's root zone.
  • Cedar and limestone junction detail in afternoon light
    02Cedar cladding meets the limestone garden wall on a continuous shadow reveal.
  • Glazed connecting walk between two building volumes
    03The connecting walk is glazed on both sides so the oak stays in view from inside.
  • Material samples for the guest wing including cedar and limestone
    04Cedar was specified untreated, with the weathered end state agreed at concept stage.

Plan diagram — Live Oak Guest Wing

Schematic after plan diagram for Live Oak Guest WingOPEN LIVINGNEW VOLUMETERRACE

Schematic diagram, not a construction drawing. Concept illustration only.

  • After
  • 760 sq ft guest wing pivoted clear of the root zone
  • Glazed connecting walk in place of an internal corridor
  • Limestone swale redirecting drainage around the foundation
  • Full-length terrace under a 9-foot overhang

Results

What changed

  • Protected live oak retained with an undisturbed root zone
  • Guest wing acoustically and visually separate from the main house
  • Massing stays below the existing ridge line from the street
  • Terrace usable through the middle of the day under a 9-foot overhang