High-end residential design
Conceptualize.
Permit.
Build.
From the first meeting to a permit set.
Luxury experience
High-end houses
MAR DESIGN STUDIO is a residential design firm in California. The service is high-end, and it stays with one house from the first meeting to the permit set. You remain in the work the whole way. The design is revised with you until it meets what you want and what the rules of the lot will allow.
- 01
First meetings
Before anything is drawn, you sit down and say what the house has to be. Must-haves, ideas, the pictures you have already saved. What is fixed gets separated from what is still open.
- 02
Schematic designs
Drafting begins with more than one scheme. You compare them, say what is wrong, and the next round is drawn closer to the house you described.
- 03
Your portal
The project gets a private portal. Drawings are posted as they change. You comment, the design is revised to meet what you want, and the next version replaces the last one there.
- 04
The model and the finishes
A three-dimensional model is built for this house only. You walk the rooms, react, and the model is updated. Finishes are chosen against that model, then adjusted until they belong in it.
- 05
Permit
The drawings are carried through to the permit set and checked against local ordinances and the building code. Consultants — structural, energy, and whoever else the city requires — are coordinated with those sheets. The design keeps being revised so it still meets what you asked for, and so it can be submitted and built.
Services
Custom homes, remodels, and ADUs
- 01
Luxury custom homes
Spanish and Italian houses: a court, thick walls, a clay-tile roof. Planned on the lot, then drawn far enough that a builder can price them.
- 02
Remodels
An existing house taken apart on paper and reassembled — clearer rooms, a better sequence, sheets a contractor can build from.
- 03
ADUs
A second dwelling on the lot. Guest house or backyard home, from the first sketch to the sheets required for permit.
Blog
Notes on the house
Things to think about before hiring an architect
The first meeting is more useful if the plan, the pictures, the finishes, and the money have already been thought about. An architect cannot invent your household.
Italian style homes
A formal face, a roof that sits low, and a loggia lined up with the garden. That is the villa. The stone farmhouse is a different Italian house.
The Spanish villa
White walls, a low red roof, a court you enter before you enter the house, and iron at the windows. The front does not have to match left to right.
Moroccan houses
Blank to the street, open to a court. The arch is a horseshoe, the tile is geometric, and the roof is as likely to be a terrace as a slope of clay.
Contact
Book a time
If the house is still an idea, or the lot is already difficult, book a conversation. Or call.