Moss Beach Residence

This project draws on two vernacular building traditions: Spanish colonial homes and pre-manufactured housing. Early rural California settlements featured simple pitched roofs and adobe-walled forms, influenced by Pueblo-Spanish building traditions. Pre-manufactured housing is currently the most common domestic housing type in the United States. 16-foot “single-wides” and 32-foot “double-wides” are transported to a site complete, and then customized by adding decks, carports, and room extensions.

This project merges these two types. Pitched-roof extruded forms stratified in plan and section form a folded triptych. The shifting, merging, eroding of the single-wide volumes produces varied interior spaces, each with a different relationship to view and outdoor spaces. A central communal hall unifies the units through its cross axis. Volumes are constructed of sedimentary layers of concrete, with varying colors of sand and gravel extracted from the site, recalling the stratified cliffs below.