Explore 15 Houses That Get the Most Out of an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU)

Jun 22, 2023

Contemporary family living setups mean parents and grandparents in need of care, teenagers and young adults in need of independence, and homeowners in need of the financial security of a guaranteed passive income are all finding themselves in the same situation, and under the same roof. With little extra space to move into, and few options in an increasingly squeezed housing market to move out to, the simple solution is just to add another roof.

For those in the market for more functional floorspace, detached single-story ADUs (accessory dwelling units) are a simple way to boost a home’s usability fast, while avoiding the regulatory wranglings inherent in more complex structural adaptations.

+ 16

As family-ready detached structures with private access, off-street parking, and occasionally with their own gardens, ADUs are architectural alchemy – transforming unused sections of a plot into rentable property. But ADUs don’t always have to be separate. All-inclusive studio apartment ADU spaces either spanning across entire stories or even just separated sections of a home’s current floor plan are the answer many homes are looking for.

The global pandemic asked millions of households all over the world the same question: ‘How do I make my home into a workplace?’ Faced with this question pre-pandemic, family architecture practice Hunt Architecture knew they did not have space inside their home for both a growing family and a growing business. With plenty of room in the garden, however, the decision to build an ADU was simple. The choice between a guest-bedroom and a separate office, however, was not. The solution? To do both.

The Hunt Studio ADU houses a guest bedroom on one side, which shares a connecting bathroom and kitchenette with an office on the other. With a large skylight and steel windows that open up a view across the garden, the light and airy office is a great place to watch the children grow.

Multi-generational living can be made more comfortable by extending or redesigning homes, but for many families stuck in close quarters, it takes too much patience. For older and younger generations – and those in between – to live alongside each other, the older generation needs to retain their independence, while young adults living with their parents need to experience independence, too.

Even in projects with no available outdoor space for a garden-built ADU, iterations that transform floor plans with interior ADUs can still provide so-called ‘granny-annexes’. One method is to convert basements or garages, for example, into separate guest living spaces with their own dedicated facilities. As one of these projects, the Exposition Heights House raises the height of its original first floor and squeezes a new one into the basement, providing the homeowner’s parents with street-level access, while the San Diego Garage Conversion instead invites the clients’ relatives to live in the main house, saving the hi-spec renovation for themselves.

Garages enjoy step-free, street-level access as a rule, and this private connection to the street makes them perfect structures to convert or extend into full, independent abodes that boast their own entrances, mailboxes, and gardens. And the provision of a fully independent home with its own access and address is a tempting one for homeowners looking to invest for the future, with real-estate one of the most recession-proof opportunities for investment.

The Birdhouse project, for example, from North Arrow Studio, transforms a two-story garage and connecting single-story bungalow into a luxury open-plan two-bedroom home with its own parking and enclosed private garden. All set within the owner’s original plot. Meanwhile, ‘one of the typical locations of the garage in old houses in Los Angeles is the rear end of the property after a long driveway,’ explains Yeh-Yeh-Yeh Architects on their LA-set Accessory Dwelling Unit Re-think project. By including a gate and gravel path leading up to the ADU in the design, the architects have created a deeper, more aesthetic front garden experience to ensure renters feel they’re entering their own private home.

Uncertainty and indecision are two of the biggest problems of any construction or renovation project. But how do you successfully build for a predicted future without a crystal ball? The Slabtown 4 project by Scott | Edwards Architecture saw two identical double-story units built, each for a single family and both with a single-story ADU underneath at ground level. By selecting clean, simple, modern, and minimal interiors, the natural light and material palettes ensure the ADUs are both flexible enough to be used either as offices, granny flats, or rented residences.

We can see in the growing trends for shared co-living and micro-living spaces, that our residential habits are changing as we become more accustomed to them. But local building regulations can find it hard to change fast enough to keep up. At the Co-Housing Denver site in Colorado, architects PRODUCTORA circumnavigate the laws by building two main units and two ADUs on the same lot and utilizing them as extra apartments, making a total of six connected studios that share large kitchen, dining, and living spaces.

‘Pool house’ is the umbrella term for any size of covered pavilion near an outdoor pool, used either as storage, a shaded rest spot, or a private space to change. Often debated, most pool houses can’t consider themselves as ADUs because not much ‘dwelling’ occurs there. Without facilities such as running water and electricity, and without insulation for overnight stays, the time spent inside is limited to the short term. With simple additions, however, a pool house ADU can be made usable year-round.

The Further Lane Pool House in East Hampton on Long Island, NY, USA, for example, features a useful bathroom at one end and a small kitchenette at the other. With the flexible covered space in between used for dining and lounging, the pavilion is usable from sunup to sundown. At the Pool House over in Amagansett, also on Long Island, meanwhile, the pool is set at the opposite corner of the plot to the main house, where a corresponding pool house ADU provides a bathroom, kitchenette, lounge, and sleeping space for lazy poolside weekends, weeks or even entire summers.

Find these selected ADU projects in this ArchDaily folder created by the author.