Internalising the View
Do you think you’d like to live in a house surrounded by a high wall? Of course not, because that would spoil the views. But what if you don’t have any views?
Sometimes the most brilliant ideas are the simplest, and the brilliance of this idea is designing the views as an integral part of the villa, capable of being located on any plot that may not actually have any decent views to begin with. Add to that the concept of inside/out living – which blurs the line between the gardens and the house itself – and you have a formula that is quite unique. Welcome to the Garden Villa!
We spoke to Jason Harris, CEO and Creative Director of UDesign, about where the idea for his latest masterpiece, the Garden Villa, came from, and what exactly it is.
“The inspiration for the Garden Villa concept comes from my conviction that there must be a solution to the problem of designing a house without good exterior views. Most people simply do not have the kind of views from a luxury dwelling that only a great deal of money can buy: uninterrupted views of the sea, the mountains, spacious golf courses and what have you. Most people are overlooked by neighbours, or have partial views that are, in the end, unsatisfactory. This raises privacy issues, and so it occurred to me, why not come up with a design concept that solves this problem by internalising the view, so to speak. A house or villa that you can build anywhere, whatever the view. In the suburbs of a town or city, or bang in the centre of town, if a plot is available. It shouldn’t matter where the house is: if properly designed according to this concept, the house will have its own views.”
Concept apart, we’re left with a villa that, even without its own views, would be a masterpiece of contemporary architecture. The pictures do not do it justice, for two reasons. The first is the difficulty most of us would have in looking behind the muted, minimalist façade of the main entrance and imagining the wild and joyful exuberance of the interior. The best chocolates always come in a muted and elegant box.
The second difficulty we have is making sense of the interior by simply looking at the pictures. What we see is a huge compendium of architectural and interior design, seemingly incapable of being contained within a relatively small space. The villa is not that small, at 500 square metres, but it is certainly a lot smaller than it appears in the photographs, and as Jason points out, it could be much smaller, if required. Architects love to speak of space, and how great architecture, taking full and creative advantage of the spaces available, can make a smaller space look big, and this is a classic example.
“The interior architecture and design has a distinctive Japanese flavour to it, almost Zen-like. Nature is our drawing board. Trees, flowers, plants, rocks, sand and architectural elements, all using nature as the vital ingredient, all designed with precision and attention to detail, all put together in many different ways with absolute respect for nature. We used lighting, furniture, fittings and some elements that may seem playful, such as the giant stainless steel spheres in the pool or the water feature as projector, but they all form an integral part of the whole. They all have a purpose. The result is what you see: a beautiful villa with wonderful views on a plot that might not necessarily have any.”
The design of the main building is fairly simple, despite initial appearances. The flat roof is a garden with moss and flowers, the master bedroom occupying the top floor. On the ground floor are the open-plan living/dining/kitchen areas, along with bathrooms and open central courtyard, while the two other bedrooms are situated behind the large paintings on each side of the central patio. Fairly simple, but deceptively so, nevertheless, because the concept of living in this villa goes way beyond what would be considered normal.
“It took over two months to design this concept, because of the detail involved, and because we allowed ideas to evolve and extend in many different directions. The living, eating and cooking areas are all very impressive in different ways, with the same contrast of surface area – the softness of some natural materials against the hardness of others – as we have on the outside. I really enjoyed working on it.”
And it shows. The now standard exquisite and creative interior design and decoration from this design studio, the perfect symmetry in some areas against the asymmetrical beauty of other areas, minimalism used to maximum effect, with splashes of colour accentuating the overall soothing blend of shape and colour that spells absolute comfort and liveability.
Warm weather residents are often night hawks, and this villa takes on a whole new personality when night falls. The various architectural features such as the pool, the interactive wall with recessed seating, the pagoda and so on, are illuminated to a standard expected in such a luxury villa, but given the importance of nature in the design, both in the outside gardens and the interior patio, every part of the enclosed plot has been illuminated. The red maple tree and other plants, trees and rocks, are picked out by hidden lighting, and the exterior walls, made from large tiles to give a black lava effect, help to merge the gardens into the night sky and create the effect of even greater distance and space.
“As soon as you enter the house, you find yourself in front of the interior courtyard facing an interior garden, with a tree growing out from the huge rocks and bushes, bang in the centre of the house itself and open to the sky above. When it rains, you not only see and hear the rain, but experience it, but you don’t get wet: the floor tiles slope imperceptibly towards the centre. In the rain, it’s part of the garden. When the sun shines, it’s part of the house. Here you can see and enjoy the weather, whatever it happens to be, and you’re actually inside the house.”
Add some well-chosen artwork, various decorative pieces in ceramics and other materials, green walls, state-of-the-art illumination and designer furniture, and you have the house of your dreams. Even if your dreams include magnificent views that were never there to begin with.
Architecture and Design by UDesign
Developed by BRIGHT.