situated on skinny lot at the edge of downtown Santa Barbara , california ,architect james Gauer 1500 -square-foot geometric house is an anomaly in town known for its code-enforced adherence to the spanish colonial style. gauer client, a couple who moved from new york city gauer had designed their manhattan apartment , wanted to maintain the felling of their contained, urban life in a california context. Gauer, who lives in victoria,british columbia, worked with the Santa Barbara based architect of record, bildsten + sherwin design studio, to devise a two-story wood- frame structure covered in crisp-edged stucco. the house in composed of three increasingly smaller. well-proportioned volumes based on a 4-foot grid; the first,a rectilinear bar at the north end of the lot, contains the entry and kitchen; the second,a 16-by-24-foot box, includes the living room and two bedrooms above; and the third and smallest volume provides a loggia that connects the living room to the garden. 'I really love the way we managed to squeeze a rather elegant circulation of spaces into a very tight lot, says gauer. after