What characterized this house more than anything was its sense of enclosure. There was no connection between the various rooms, nor was there any link to the expansive surrounding garden. In every project, we view architecture, interior design, and landscape design as three inextricably linked elements that form a single whole. In a private residence, one of the three cannot truly exist without a proper and profound integration of the other two.
During the renovation, we opened up the interior walls in various ways, without compromising on a partial separation between spaces. We opened the exterior walls to the garden and bridged the gap between the house and the garden level—which was originally lower—using a series of deck terraces and rock gardens.
We viewed the landscape design as a central component of the overall home design. Throughout the construction and renovation process, we opened the house to the garden by enlarging existing openings and installing an “aquarium window” with a Belgian iron profile. This window protrudes from the wall plane into the garden, creating a powerful sense of the outdoors even while inside the living room. It also allows the living room, which was quite narrow to begin with, to look and feel wider.
We utilized the existing height differences between the house and the garden specifically to create a connection between them. We designed a small outdoor entrance plaza and connected the different levels using stairs, stone benches, and boulders. In the designing the inside spaces, we used rust-brown painted Belgian iron profiles for the windows, beechwood furniture, and a rich color palette.