The house is the equivalent of an architectural mullet—business in the front and party in the back. What was originally a one story multi-roofed hip and gable house from the 50’s is rebooted into the now. Our solution was to keep the very functional suburban trope of a garage facing the street, but to rethink with a modest language of charred wood siding and hipped standing seam roofs to speak of a time gone by. Inserted adjacent to this is a complementary and contrasting 2 story tilted, striped building piece of a more sculptural, exuberant language. This part of the residence visually and functionally connects and opens to precious side and rear yard areas. As one comes into the front entry court on the southern part of the lot, large glass vitrines provide views in and through the house to back pool area. The first floor is one large contiguous social space divided into a kitchen dining entertainment zone and a second spacious media room leading to the pool which located at the western end of the property to create exposure to the south and west in the afternoons. Between these two spaces the floating staircase to the second floor is surrounded and structurally supported by a slatted scrim like cage of steel tubing that contains the double height volume of the stair tower and front entryway. The bedrooms of the house are located on the upper floor, the screening of the vertical transportation allows their discreet placement in the middle of the space. The pool area has been treated as an extension of the house, another outdoor room; the flooring is precise and extensive, plantings of bamboo and succulents define bordered areas. The connection with the interior emphasized by the door systems that pocket into the wall. The full width balcony provides a shaded area next to the water at the deck level and up on the second floor the wood trellis members are spaced tight to widely as they move away from the house creating diffused sunlight. Moments of exception and perception occur throughout the house. Brightly painted steel window boxes on the second floor sparkle like flower petals on the exterior and create soft glows of color inside the rooms. Beyond color, these framed apertures provide limited views into upstairs bedrooms from the exterior, lessening the sense of exposure of the sideyard neighbors. Framed skylights in the house extruded down past the ceiling plane shepard light into the rooms without revealing the sky; the interior of the skylights painted bright colors or skinned with mirrors create an infinite sky kaleidoscope. In the master bath a portal window looks through the stairwell, through another window to provide furtive a periscope view of the street activity. Even the other inhabitants of the house, 2 Rhodesian ridgeback canines, get their own unique hangout underneath the floating staircase, where the can wait for the owners by the front door in anticipation of their return home.