A renovation and 1,000-square-foot expansion conceived for a 900-square-foot home in Highland Park, New Jersey, achieves maximum visual effect for a budget of only $400,000. Unhindered by neither a complex program nor a compelling setting, collaborating designers Studio ST Architects and Z-A took an alternative approach to suburban additions-such as contrasting old and new, borrowing the old to cover the new, or placing new inside the old.

Extract from architects website. 
Adding to a suburban house does not entail a fancy program and there is no picturesque setting or urban density to be reckoned with. Rather the mundane nature of this project lends itself to a focus on the act of addition the question of old versus the new and the meaning of preservation versus evolution.

We began with the notion that evolution and growth is at the core of any architectural endeavor and that every project is an addition or an extension of its context. This notion generates an understanding of being contextual as being prone to mutation and growth.

The typology of addition is in itself the typology of mutation. When looking at different precedents at the building scale it's easy to find the modernist approach that contrasts the old and the new, the neo historicist approach that borrows from the old to cover the new, the archeological approach of the old being covered by the new and the preservationist approach of the new occupying the old.

However only when looking at the urban scale did we find the typology of addition where the new and the old simultaneously impact one another.

The new carves into the body of the old, redirecting flows and at the same time being redirected by the flows and matter of the old. When looking at the evolution of urban typologies through time, it becomes clear that this is not a morphological and definitely not a stylistic categorization of type; rather it is a performative one.

It is a typology that can only be defined by relations of weak and strong structures, both physical (voids, highways) and non physical (social, economical).

Since we wanted to maintain a relatively compact volume the private programs were placed in the elevated volume and the public programs were placed in the existing structure which became a big room where different functions can shift and grow as needed.

The program that connects the two, the family room, is placed in the elevated structure but because of its semi-public nature it is open to below and allows for the double height space to flow smoothly.

The programmatic use and treatment of the outdoor spaces are conceived as part of the addition process where new landscaped spaces are carved into the existing grass surface.