How do you triple the size of a house when it sits on a small lot in Venice, California? Young Los Angeles architects Steffen Leisner, Ali Jeevanjee, and Phillip Trigas faced this challenge when they collaborated on expanding a house for a couple living in a 970-square-foot, avocado-colored Venice bungalow with shingled siding and a gabled roof near Abbot Kinney Boulevard, the town’s vibrant central drag.

The owners—a filmmaker and a multimedia artist—asked the architects to provide them with 2,500 square feet of new space on the bungalow’s long, narrow lot, including living and office areas as well as an art studio and rental unit. Since the bungalow, which contains a kitchen and an entertainment area, had been renovated only five years before, there was no point in knocking it down and starting from scratch. Knowing that a large addition would dwarf the existing home, the architects added three multistory structures that distribute the new program around the site, making the existing bungalow a vital part of a new complex.