When they were looking for a house as a young family, the clients preferred to invest their budget in an old and shaky patch-house on a nice plot of land in a good quiet neighborhood, thinking that with time they will renovate the house and will bring it to its full potential. And a few years passed and so it was.
In my first visit it was obvious to me that the needed work is massive but the potential is huge. A thorough planning work is required, whose goal is a complete reconstruction of the house while keeping the beautiful ancient trees over which the owner of the house fought with the workers to keep, despite the fact that taking them down would have mean far easier on all parties, as well as preserving some of the elements on the first floor, such as the kitchen.
The turning of the old shelter into a proper Mamad (safe space) allowed us to receive building permits for the second floor which was destroyed and redesigned from scratches. The fronts where renovated and the ground floor was upgraded and finalized.
Facing the street, the northern front of the house keeps the privacy of the family, while the southern front, facing the great garden, is in fact made in both floors from large glass windows and wide balconies and porches that let the outside in and give the house a feeling of limitlessness.
The grayish-blue outer plaster mends with the smooth concrete floor on the ground floor.
The television room is not part of the living room. It invites a non-formal sprawling on pouffes like the family likes on a raised wooden platform, or sitting on the engraved bar.
The northern garden which faces the street was paved with rectangular graphite gray tiles in a fishbone pattern with an accessorized iron gate.
The study received an entrance to the northern garden, as well as a new restroom.
The new and spacey shelter was turned into a laundry room, and the stairway, which was dark and isolated, as gotten a window facing the garden, as well as a wood cladding matching the parquet floor on the second floor and an accessorized railing.
It’s a warm and inviting house, where the three girls like hanging with friends in. The parents thought it important to be both close to the girls’ rooms, and yet still maintain certain privacy. Since the owner of the house has frequent work trips, in which she stay in boutique hotels and is exposed to creative spaces, I was able to suggest a daring design, the using of the parents’ bathroom as a barrier between the master bedroom and the main hallway.
In front of the door is located a wall on which a wooden shelf is hovering with LoVela sinks. To the left there is a wide shower and to the right the restroom, which is separated with a window and an iron door with frosted glass. The whole bathing zone was covered with stone cladding, to separate it from the parquet-covered hallway and bedroom.
Against the other side of the wall is the bed, since it is located in the middle of the room, to horizontal niches are used instead of a side cabin.
In front of the bed is a full glass window as wide as the room which faces a private balcony paved with painted concrete tiles.
The parents’ unit is an example for maximal usage of space that doesn’t come at the price of openness and comfort. The passages have double functions and so much of the space was saved. Still, the view remains open and therefore there is a feel of a larger room. The large mirror above the sinks double the space despite the fact that the wall is facing the door, and the view from the bed is of blue skies and green tree-tops.
One of the basic instructions which were important to the clients was the creation of three large rooms of at least 12 m2 each for each girl, out of the will to give them a real living space for playing, studying and hosting, and not only sleeping as in most standard child room that are built today.
In an aspiration to keep an equal appeal despite the designing limitations the larger room got a French window.
The middle one got a French window and a small balcony, and the smallest one enjoys a large balcony covered from three sides that is used as an extension of the room.
The girls’ bathroom was paved with grayish blue concrete tiles. The large window with the wide bench lets lots of light into the room, and green foliage create a fun playing zone that makes it difficult to take the girls out of the bathroom when they finish bathing.
This is a house filled with many intimate public spaces, inner and outer corners for a good time with both family and friends, yet in the same time, with an equal emphasis, gives private and personal spaces for each member of the family. I thank my clients for a joyful journey and wish them long years of comfort in their new home.
