Residences
The plan before the view
Every expensive house on a beautiful site makes the same mistake, and it is made in the first week of design.
Your result
The Pavilion
One volume, a great deal of glass, and the discipline to keep it empty.
You want a house that is mostly one room, mostly open, and mostly looking at something. The pleasure is in the space itself rather than in what is put into it, which means the standard for every object is brutally high: in a room with nothing in it, everything shows.
What works about it
You will get a house that feels calm the moment you walk in and photographs like nothing else. Living in a single volume also makes people gather, which is the thing large houses usually fail at.
What to watch
Three risks, all fixable at design stage. Acoustics: one hard volume with glass on two sides is a room where nobody can hear anybody at dinner, so budget for soft floor, heavy curtain and an upholstered mass. Afternoon sun: vertical shading on the west or the room is lost from four until dusk. And storage, because a pavilion with visible clutter is simply a mess.
The rooms it needs
- One volume with a low, compressed entry before it
- A separate small room with a door for the times somebody needs one
- Storage equal to ten per cent of the floor area, out of sight
- A sheltered outdoor room on the leeward side
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Daylight is the only material in a house that is free, and the only one that is almost never specified.
Interiors
The half-metre decisions
A room reads as wrong for reasons guests can feel and cannot name. Almost all of them are measurements.
The Saturday letter
One letter a week, on a Saturday.
One letter a week: the new long read, one room worth studying, one number worth knowing. No advertising, no tracking, one click to leave.