Building a companion building instead

Now, how about just keeping the existing home as is - at least for now. And build another building 20 feet from the existing, 8 feet lower. In between the two buildings would be a pool and a patio.
This is actually very similar to the ideas I had when I first moved here, inspired by the MK Breeze house. The patio with the pool would be the breezeway. The existing home would be on the north side of the breezeway, the new on the south side.
I tried modeling it in Sketchup - sorry, it is very unpolished. Here is a snapshot of the houses seen from SSW.