In this project, Leger Wanaselja Architecture remodeled and added to a 100 year old house and adjacent concrete block shop in Berkeley, California. Raising up the two and a half story house and building a new commercial space below created a compound of two street level commercial spaces with two residential units above. Rather than simply refurbishing the existing buildings, we salvaged them. Recombining building elements with discarded auto parts and recycled materials, we created a modern, sun-filled architecture that uses a minimum of new material. Several energy saving measures were included throughout that project that taken together dramatically improved energy performance. Residences now use less than a third as much gas as those in similar buildings of this era. Cutting edge at the time of completion, this project won both national and local AIA awards for green design.
