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Liang House
Arcadia, California, USA
Residential
2024 – 2025
The Liang House was a 1950s family home, functional but accumulated with decades of incremental decisions that worked against each other. Dark, disconnected rooms, an undersized 9'6" x 10'2" kitchen, a hallway that consumed space without purpose, and a layout that couldn't support three generations living under one roof. The clients needed more: a larger kitchen open to a shared great room, proper bathrooms, dedicated storage, a home office, and a secret door connecting grandma's room to the rest of the house.
That constraint, remodel not addition, became the design brief, keeping the project on a faster approval path and preserving budget for construction rather than carrying costs. The first move was the roof: an uninsulated section left by a previous addition wasn't just an efficiency problem, it was a ceiling problem. Correcting the roof assembly unlocked the height needed in the main living space without crossing into addition territory, and that recovered volume became the organizing move for everything that followed.
The main living area was reorganized around the fireplace, with shelving defining thresholds rather than walls closing rooms off. The kitchen was designed as two distinct but related spaces built around serious cooking, including a wok setup, resolved through close coordination with the cabinet fabricator. The master suite was expanded with a full bathroom added, and the rear family room converted into a proper live-work space. At 3,236 square feet, the finished home is nearly identical in size to what existed before. What changed is almost entirely how that square footage is organized and experienced.