Chrysalis Award

Our Story

Although we have proudly won three national Chrysalis Awards, this project had more challenges and difficult obstacles to overcome. Therefore, the final successful outcome of this project and the happiness of the owners made this one of our most satisfying achievments.

The following is the history of one of our Chrysalis Award-winning additions – The Client is a retired physician who had headed Burn and Trauma Units, and wants to publish his life experiences and write medical text books. Therefore he needed a Study / Library.

Challenges of the project: The City of Santa Fe guidelines require that no residence in this area can cover more than 40% of the lot, maximum additional coverage permitted was 71.85 square feet. The neighborhood association architectural guidelines state that “the building roof line for each dwelling unit shall not exceed twenty (20) vertical feet above the natural ground surface…” Since the existing finish first floor was well above the natural ground surface, we were restricted to a two story addition with a sliding maximum height of 17’-0” to 18’-0” (worst case to best case). So there were many constraints and restrictions.

Overall Results: The Santa Fe building program required over 450 square feet of additional living space, so we had to build up. To meet the height requirements, we removed the existing roof structure in the area of the addition, lowering the bearing to 7’-6” above the existing floor, installed 4×8 beams and structural decking. This resulted in the finish first floor to finish second floor being 8’-3 ½”, while still giving the illusion that the new ceiling is 8’-0” above the first floor. We did this again on the second floor, 7’-6” bearing, beams, decking and foam insulation roofing, in the areas of the home office and bathroom to meet the 17’-0” height requirement. In the study we were able to raise the bearing to 8’-6”, since we had a new height requirement of 18’-0”. This gave the study, the reason for the addition, the illusion of the ceiling being 9’-0” above the floor.