Our clients desired an open, modern home with clean lines that their children ages 10 and 14 can grow in.  The husband is a swimming fanatic who collects cars (and boats), so programmatically we needed to address how to accommodate a very large garage on the property as well as a 50 meter pool.  Our solution was to minimize the size of the house from the street and work with the topography.  The site drops dramatically to towards the back yard, which allowed us to keep the street frontage one story.  The basement becomes a walk-out to the pool on the lower level, and we ran the garage over it perpendicular to the street.  We then placed the bedrooms over the garage, thus minimizing the scale of the house while maximizing the views to the rear yard.