Urban Life In The Country

Planning a family house tailored to its tenant’s needs is always a unique experience. Bespoke design begins with the research of lives, habits, passions and dreams in their purest form. In this particular example, the architects were tasked with exploring the spaces between an urban lifestyle and countryside living. The interactions between indoor spaces and outdoor garden & street as well as ecological building and sustainable architecture, both played a key role in the design process.

The house, a clean rectangular white box embraced by exposed concrete walls. The raw concrete buffer creates a generous outdoor terrace enabling seamless passage between interior and exterior domains. Concrete, the underlining material throughout the design, manifests itself once more in the form of a concrete floor. The floor, with its thermal mass, acts as a thermal regulator dampening the temperature gradients between the day and the night.

Viewed from the front, a multitude of materials comes together in splendid harmony. Highlighted by the composition of opaque walls, privacy vis a vis the street is naturally occurring.

The long southern façade enjoys the soothing Mediterranean sun year round, penetrating the large windows along their entire length. The southern orientation of the building, combined with the integral pergola, protects internal spaces from direct rays of light while providing optimal luminosity of the interior.

The ground floor spreads over 120 sqm consisting of public functions such as living, dining and cooking. These functions share one large open space with a concealed kitchen extension allowing the convenient concealment of any kitchen work in progress. A stripe, in the form of a cockpit window, stretches above the full length of the vast kitchen counter. The window overlooks both the entrance walkway as well as the street. The dining table, being the center point of household activities, stands overlooking the outdoors though numerous openings engulfed in Omni direction light.

Natural raw materials in their most primitive form were used throughout the building. Examples are primal exposed concrete in its casting texture, black iron front door, unpainted aluminum window frames, industrial uncolored ply wood panels. The ply wood panels are an environmentally friendly wood that originates through industrial growth and does not require the cutting down natural timber.

Adjacent to the living room is the architect’s studio, carefully designed to provide a private working environment, while still maintaining full control of the household by overlooking on both the garden and public spaces.

An Upper floor of 92 sqm is discovered through the staircase in a multi-function zone embracing a large patio. The patio, acting as a funnel of light, pours natural light onto the entire floor enabling various exposures throughout the day. The master bedroom features an additional private open terrace in a southerly orientation, bathing the bedroom in a gentile blanket of light.

The children’s living quarters allow for flexibility while keeping in mind the inevitable changes that occur as children grow older. This is evident by the lack of built-in furniture and in their stead, a collection of individual furniture acquired through the course of time. Some examples include an inherited desk from grandpa and a set of metal lockers repurposed as a toy storage cabinet.

Architects: Eshet Alperovich www.eaarch.co.il
Location: ISRAEL
Plot size is 500 sqm.
Area: 212 sqm +100 sqm basement
Project year: 2016
Photographs: Tal Nisim www.talnisim.co.il
Tenants: Family of 5