Victoria Garden Mews

In this project, the 3,000 sq-ft., two story 'Front Unit' was designed and completed first. Originally designed and engineered to be an addition/retrofit to a historical structure, this project presented several challenges and required some creative structural design to retrofit an almost 100-year-old timber structure to meet current seismic and wind resisting element requirements. Prior to construction, the City of Santa Barbara agreed to allow the original building to be pulled down and rebuilt as new, provided the 'original' portion of the structure be built to match the historic structure, with the new addition to the back. D&Z was asked to redesign the front portion of the structure as new after successfully completing the design of the retrofit.

  • Exterior before.

  • Exterior after.

  • Basement & Footing Excavation, looking from upper floor of front unit.

  • Basement & footing excavation, reinforcement placement has begun.

  • Both moment frames visible, the cistern room can be seen behind the 3-story frame on the right.

  • From the third floor, the 8x ridge beams in place (wrapped in plastic). The front unit can be seen through the window.

  • On the third floor, ridge beams, 8x post, rafters and SIP's roof panels in place.

  • Basement retaining walls poured, both moment frames visible.

  • 3-story moment frame.

The 8,000 sq-ft., three story multi-family structure was designed during the construction phase of the front unit. This new structure was designed by the architect, Thompson Naylor Architects, Inc., to be one of the greenest new buildings in the Santa Barbara area.  Originally intended and designed to be constructed completely of Structural Insulated Panels (SIP's), the structure was changed to a combination of stick framed walls and SIP's roof panels to accommodate the requirements of the newly adopted CBC that went into effect prior to the completion of the design. Very few of the walls from one story to the next line up on this structure, requiring a fairly extensive floor framing system incorporating several steel and engineered lumber beams to support not only roof and floor framing, but in many areas the walls above as well.

The lateral system of this structure incorporated conventional wood shear walls, in addition to two multi-story moment frames (one 2-story frame and one 3-story). A full basement is provided below the entire structure except the garage and includes a concrete walled water cistern room designed by the architect to collect and store rainwater for landscape irrigation, and a corner of the basement with a structural glass roof at the sidewalk level designed to provide natural lighting for an art studio below.