Carl Groch

Owner & Architect:

My career as an Architect began in the late1950's when as a small boy I lived in a new neighborhood constructed in what had been a Walnut Orchard. I designed and constructed tree houses for some of the neighborhood kids. Since then all I have wanted to be was an Architect.

Graduated from UC Berkeley in 1969. Since graduation I have lead design teams for single family and multifamily homes, commercial buildings, light industrial buildings, high tech manufacturing facilities, container terminals and public schools.

Now semi-retired, I have devoted my energies to the design of new and the renovation of single family homes. I also take occasional breaks to tour beautiful parts of the world on my bicycle.

Projects:

El Cerrito ADU & Home Expansion

This is an early study of this project. There were two parts: add a bedroom suite over an existing garage and convert an existing workshop building into an ADU.

The proposed ADU was designed to be a studio apartment. Two potential furniture arrangements were studied to be sure the studio apartment plan worked.

Conceptual design for a small mixed use project in El Sobrante, CA.

Work in Progress:

This project adds a new second floor to a house built in 1927. The new second floor will include a new Primary Bedroom Suite and a home office. On the existing first floor the Kitchen will be expanded and renovated.

One of the design objectives was to integrate the new second floor into the aesthetics of the existing house and thus have a completed project that looked like it was always a two story building.

The Owners decided this design was too expensive. A new design, far less expensive, design adding a primary suite to the front of the house is in the permit process.