Baba Architects

A young family engaged Baba Architects to study a rear addition to their split-level ranch, responding to evolving spatial
needs as their children grow and aging grandparents visit more frequently. The design explores strategies to expand
livable area while improving flexibility and comfort across generations. A unique butterfly roof form was designed to carefully avoid covering bedroom windows on the second floor.

Multiple options were developed, including a dual-purpose home office and guest suite with integrated mudroom, as well as a scheme that introduces a new family room—allowing the existing family space to be repurposed as a private office
and guest room. The project is currently in the design phase.

Visualizing the potential of a new client’s house.
Architectural drawings communicate a great deal — but not always to the person who matters most. For many clients, reading plans and elevations feels like decoding a foreign language. Visualization bridges that gap, translating intent into something immediate and legible.

This Naperville split-level is a familiar typology in the Chicago suburbs — reasonable footprint, awkward massing, exterior that reads as background noise. The renovation concept recomposes the facade entirely: craftsman detailing, stone base, arched entry, and a dark palette that grounds the house against its site and lets the mature tree canopy do its work.
The interior follows suit. The existing kitchen and living area are replaced with a single open sequence — coffered ceilings with rift-sawn oak framing, a marble waterfall island anchoring the kitchen, and a living room that borrows light and visual depth from the kitchen beyond.

Some projects never get built. This one stays with me.
A master suite addition in Wilmette, IL — conceived as a private retreat within the home. The program was deceptively simple: a place for parents to exhale. What emerged was something more considered.
Exposed rafters with steel rafter tie connections read as structure made honest. Skylights pull the sky into the peak. A double-sided fireplace divides the room without closing it — the bed on one side, a sitting area on the other, and a window bench where the light lands in the afternoon.
The fireplace surround is custom — blackened, tactile, scaled to hold the room. The palette throughout is restrained: natural wood, warm white plaster, aged metal.
Unbuilt, but not unrealized.

Affordable housing doesn’t have to mean anonymous architecture. This new independent senior living community in Indiana challenges that assumption — four stories of thoughtfully composed facades, carefully considered amenity programming, and residential scale that respects its occupants. Pickleball courts, bocce ball, walking paths, dog wash stations, a fitness room — spaces that support an active, dignified life.