Guests coming up the front steps of this hilltop home are met with a Carrera marble sculpture by Richard Erdman, titled Serenade, selected by our clients, whose devotion to the process made this an especially joyful collaboration. Also part of the team were Robert Wright and Jason York of McCormick and Wright, who did the interior design and were a distinct pleasure to work with. There are a lot of details and non-standard finishes in this house – personal taste, not trendy taste.
It is always our ambition for our clients to experience an emotional and sensory reaction upon entering a house of our design. “Ahh” and “Wow,” mean we’ve succeeded. Usually this initial response comes passing through the entry, or looking out to the horizon from inside the central living area. But for this project, located in the Outpost Estates area of the Hollywood Hills, the thrill begins while still in your car. “The property is situated at the end of a cul-de-sac, and we pushed the site out as far as possible on the slope, so the house is well below street level,” Marc Whipple explains. “This allowed us to do an upside down house; the approach is a curvy elevated driveway that’s pretty steep, as you go down the views just get better and better, the gates open and you are onto the roof of the house completely surrounded by south-facing “jetliner” views. So, the whole experience for the homeowner or a guest, just getting to the house, is very dramatic.”
3V House is located in a gardened neighbourhood in São Paulo, which was built on an old floodplain area. This condition brought us to the solution of slightly elevating the property land and its garden relative to the street level, thereby protecting it from the flooding rains that this area is subject to.
The context of the villa construction is Lake Como. The height of insertion of the building is the so-called “half hill” that is the part of mountain that is between the lake and the wood, the part that historically was to agricultural vocation. Among the “new wood” it is still visible the past presence of man, who occupied that territory with stone houses. The land in which the building is located has a double inclination: it hangs from west to east and from south to north and thanks to a retain wall above it, it passes the historic pedestrian street that connects most of the northern villages of the lake. The project site has an amazing view of the Comacina island. This view, however, does not face frontally, but is shifted to one side. The set of perceptions during the survey generated the idea of composition of the building. It consists of two higher volumes at the ends of the lot, connected on the ground floor by a large living room and on the first floor by a terrace.
This is a meticulously hand crafted 3 story tower consisting of two bedrooms, private garden, deck and pool area. It is situated on a sloping plot amidst the breathtaking western cliffside of Uluwatu, Bali. While the top bedroom offers a panoramic view of the Indian Ocean, the middle floor serves as the living room, which opens up to a small pool and outside lounge area. The lower bedroom is an intimate stone cladded space, surrounded by tropical green foliage. The structure is made of carefully selected reused teak and ironwood, glass, steel elements and local limestone. The façade consists of movable vertically slatted screens that filter and soften the piercing tropical sunlight, enabling the external shading of the large glass elements that can be opened on all four sides of the building, which changes the buildings appearance. The rooms house a small collection of vintage black & white photography by Dick Hoole, legendary surf photographer.
As part of the expansion of the Uluwatu Surf Villas, Cliff Front 7 (CARBON HOUSE) has been designed in collaboration with Tim Russo.
The overall design is a result of applied challenges through plot boundaries amongst the natural landscape. This tropical modern villa consists of 4 bedrooms and maintains a consistent palette of 100-plus year-old reclaimed teak from Java, reclaimed ironwood from Kalimantan, andesite, terrazzo, local limestone, and floor to ceiling windows. The predominant gesture of the house is it’s polygonal shading element, which introduces a transition space, semi-covered and connecting the indoors with the outdoors. Various folds in the roof give a sense of protection and privacy, and each bedroom bares it’s own signature as a result of the project’s overarching architectural narrative. Cladded with reclaimed teak, the ceiling gives a stark contrast to the lime stone walls that pick up the geometric theme on another scale – a big puzzle of individually cut stone plates that are sourced from a quarry near by. An expansive garden scape cascades from the angular infinity pool, back dropped by the Indian Ocean. Custom furniture was created to fit into the buildings unique angles. This villa houses a collection of oversized framed art by Andy Davis.
Totalling a plot area of 810 SQM, the plot is on the edge of a cliff which is a privileged spot overlooking the surroundings and offering wonderful views and an exceptional orientation. The House is located in Channiir, at 500m altitude in the Mount Lebanon district. Villa CH730 can be found on a mountainside that falls towards the North, and the access street is located on the south at the top part of the slope. The building site is overgrown on a steeply inclined hillside with a wide prospect over the inclined valley of Chnaniir. Taking advantage of the 25m slope towards the river, the incline played a pivotal role in the massing and shape of this villa.
The client wished for an affordable house which interacts with the countryside through its large windows. Based on the topography, the home is designed to be an architectural experience from beginning to end. The home is full of brilliant solutions and creative ideas for what often seems like an endless stream of problems and challenges designing a house built into a hill. However, the views and unique architectural elements that are only possible to achieve with slope house designs are always worth the effort.
As part of the expansion of the Uluwatu Surf Villas, Ocean View 3 (PURI BUKIT) has been designed in collaboration with Tim Russo.
This four bedroom villa sits on top of a cliffside hill overlooking the Indian Ocean in Uluwatu, Bali. As a result of the oblique nature of its plot, the large multifaceted wooden roof drapes over the building’s organization within its boundaries. The center of the roof is crowned with a generous skylight that illuminates the expansive, centrally located living room. While the main living area flows towards the outdoor pool side terrace and garden, the central core of the house corresponds to the prevailing linear axis running from the ascending entrance stairway, through the main living hall and all the way towards the sea.
Nestled amidst a sprawling 75,000 sq. ft. of lush green plot Nene’s residence is an architectural delight that looks spectacular with its clean, bold lines defining its glory. The house is linear that runs along the east-west axis with the entrance being at the centre that parts the public and private spaces in two halves. The house is designed such that minimal heat penetrates but at the same time maximum natural light and ventilation floods in all the areas. With no additional floor plate, the house expands on the ground, housing four bedrooms, a lavish living, family area and a courtyard that is Zen through it placement and design. A luxurious swimming pool overlooks the family area that further opens up to a vast garden.
Utterly introvert, this house is located on the last plot of a desired neighbourhood in the outskirts of Sofia, Bulgaria. The complexity of the program confronts the size of the site thus determining the tree structure of the house. Each of the three stories differs in both size and concealment strategy. The vastest first story is underground yet naturally lit and directly connected to the street and the garden. The compressed and mostly open ground floor together with the small garden is hidden behind the hedge. The privacy and sunlight of the large upper floor are meticulously controlled by big scale sliding panels. Only the simple hovering pigmented zinc volume and the blind entrance are exposed to the street while the rest of the complex structure remains unrevealed. The spaces inside are integrated around the light of the central atrium and pierced by unexpected space connections. The reflective roof of the deep veranda brings back garden view to the interior. The linear underground space of the swimming pool has visual and physical contact with the garden while the bright garage is connected to the rest of the house through an under-stair periscope space.
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