One way to take advantage of a view
 
Shortly after we moved into our house, I was up on the roof doing a little
work. I discovered that we had an amazing view. You don’t realize it
when you come to our house, but we are on the top of a hill. The land
behind us drops down to the west, towards the Pacific. Although we are
5 miles from the ocean, we have a view of the Pacific Ocean, Tijuana, the Coronado Islands, San Diego Bay from National City to Coronado to Point Loma, the office buildings in downtown San Diego and Mount Soledad to the
north.

I built a small platform in our backyard olive tree, with the help of my friend Scott. I could lean a ladder against it, climb up and perch in the branches. After a while, we decided to build something larger and more accessible.

It was too expensive and too disruptive to add a second floor to the house. Instead, we decided to build an elevated deck. The natural spot for it was next to our backyard garage, in place of a one story covered patio built by the previous owners. Our backyard plants were pretty large by that point, and we didn’t want to remove any of them. The first floor supports were located at the corners of the existing patio slab. The second floor projects out over the supports to give us more deck area.

In the days before digital modeling software, I made scale models. My favorite materials were scrap foam core boards (usually with drawings
still glued to them) and a hot glue gun. Messy and rough, but fast. Easy to assemble, easy to tear apart and change. The deck model was made at 1/48th size (1/4″=1′ scale). It is small enough to be easy to make and handle, large enough (barely) to get your eye down next to it and see what it would be like. I love digital models, but there is something wonderful about a scale model that you can touch.

The tall vertical shapes next to the deck in the model are abstractions of a pair of large sycamore trees in our yard.

These are photos of the final model. I don’t have any records of the earlier schemes, but I remember that the awnings and overhead beams came late in the process. I also remember that the expression of the structure and connections as the main design theme evolved over time, too. Although next to the garage, the deck is free standing. The very prominent diagonal braces give sideways stiffness to resist shaking from earthquakes.