From

Home & Garden

To save money, the couple priced
fixtures online and used plywood
for walls indoors and out.

MODEL HOME Mr. Myers's own
house in Montecito, which inspired
the scaled-down version he
designed for Ms. Morioka and Ms. Robins.

Mr. Myers, who is perhaps best known for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, had bigger ideas. When he came to look at the house, he told them, "You don't need me to make a bathroom, and you aren't exploiting the value of your property." Instead, he came up with a plan to tear down the ramshackle garage in the middle of the backyard and build an indoor-outdoor loft for living and sleeping. While he was at it, he suggested adding a rental apartment over a new garage on the rear alley.

In no time, Ms. Morioka recalled, "We went from a bathroom to a tower, before setting a ceiling of $120,000 and pulling back." She and Ms. Robins quickly dropped any plans for the garage and rental unit, but were tempted by the loft idea.

They drove to Montecito to see the soaring steel and glass house that Mr. Myers had built for himself and his wife, Vicki. Impressed by its open, light-filled interior, they eagerly embraced the modestly scaled version of his own home that the architect proposed, using a set of Lucite blocks to explain his concept of a loft space linked to the cottage by a breezeway, with a detached steel-frame carport.

Ms. Morioka, a principal in Adams Morioka, a graphic design firm, and Ms. Robins, a professional chef who recently opened a food store near the beach, had bought their little cottage, on a 40-by-180-foot lot, for $272,000 in 2000.

"I told Barton we didn't want to be surrounded by steel," Ms. Morioka said. "His house feels warm because it's filled with a lifetime of collections, which we don't have."" The architect suggested marine-grade plywood for the lining and exterior. By staining and sealing the rough-textured facade, they could save the cost of cladding it with metal or stucco.

Ms. Robins, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., insisted on professional-quality fittings and finishes. Ms. Morioka, whose grandparents immigrated from Japan, hoped to infuse the house with her heritage. Mr. Myers, it turned out, had admired traditional Japanese houses as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been playing variations on that theme, in steel and plywood, ever since.

Today, the addition's boxy top appears from the street to be an integral part of the 1950's bungalow, with its low-pitched roof. Construction was completed last year, and the strong California sun has already faded the soft tones of red, green and brown that the couple chose for the exterior. Julie Milligan, a lawyer turned landscape designer, planted the front yard with a dense green screen, and a palisade of bamboo in back has already grown 30 feet high.

Ms. Robins painted the walls and sanded the floors of the old house to freshen them up, but nothing prepares a visitor for the surprise of stepping down into the glass-roofed breezeway that links the bungalow to the addition. An inner wall of boldly grained cedar plays off the view of sky overhead and vegetation seen through glass doors at either end, so that even the breezeway's interior feels like part of the garden.

Inside the addition, an off-center passage, lined with translucent glass-fronted closets, leads past the bathroom to the loft. Two of the loft walls are clad in the same plywood as the breezeway, and the south face opens up through pocketing glass sliders and a roll-up glass door to a landscaped courtyard. Another slider, of translucent glass, reveals the bathroom, with its shower and hinoki wood soaking tub from Roberts Hot Tubs.

Between the bed and the bathroom, a sitting area with Eames furniture and a Pakistani rug on the polished concrete floor allows the loft to do double duty as a private retreat and a space for entertaining, with the courtyard as an outdoor room that can be used for most of the year. The whole addition is "just a simple box, but it isn't as simple as it first appears," Mr. Myers said.

The greatest challenge was to realize the architect's design on a tight budget. Good contractors are expensive and sometimes reluctant to lavish effort on an 880-square-foot structure. Mr. Myers assembled the construction crew and told them: "People will see everything you do, it's all exposed. I want you to bring your families back to show them what you've done."

His encouragement seems to have worked, and it probably also helped that Ms. Robins was on site every day and willing to do a lot of the work herself. The artisan who installed the green glass tiles in the shower took three days to get them exactly right, and the finishes on the plywood are extraordinarily smooth.

Ms. Robins took responsibility for selecting and securing high-grade faucets, the soaking tub from Roberts Hot Tubs and stainless restaurant sinks for the bathroom, going online to get the best price and then bargaining with local suppliers. In the end, the cost climbed to $287,000, far above their original ceiling, but a lot less than the local average for quality construction, which is now around $500 a square foot.

One recent evening, as they broke out Champagne at twilight in the garden, the couple gazed fondly into their glowing loft. "The house blurs the boundaries between indoors and out, and gives you the best of both,"" Ms. Morioka said. "It's incredibly inspiring, and it expands the way we perceive our own creativity."

For her partner, it provides a menu of choice. "It's a great place to entertain, but it also gives the two of us room to breathe and spaces where we can be alone when we want," Ms. Robins said. "It's all about basic human needs: I provide food, Barton created the shelter, and everyone's life is enriched."