Calais Terrace

Open plan, light and sunny home design

Calais Terrace

Open plan, light and sunny home design

The client’s brief specified a modern light and sunny holiday home, offering a sense of departure from every day’s routine.

Keywords forming the Design Brief: open plan, quirky but not a ‘statement’, vehicle or boat for departure. The house has been anchored to the gently sloping site by means of a ‘Jetty’ like structure extending from the driveway to the main entry. This ‘Jetty’ serves to create a sense of arrival to the holiday destination while leaving behind life’s everyday clamour. The continuous clerestory walls create the appearance of floating roof planes, alluding to the theme of lightness and ‘setting sail’.

This 3 bedroom holiday home was designed to take advantage of the southern sea views and to admit the northern sun. Kitchen, Dining and Living spaces open onto one another, receiving both the sun from the north and the views to the south, provided by glazed walls at either end. The house has three ‘pods’: The main bedroom & garage wing, the guest wing and – connecting the other two.- the living/dining/kitchen area sitting lightly in between.

The cladding of the bedroom ‘pods’ is continued around all four sides, including the walls adjacent to the li/di/ki area. Together with extensive glazing this living and entertaining area conveys the feeling of an outdoor patio between two solid forms. Two industrial type sliding doors leading from the living area into 2 bedrooms further create the impression of an exterior interior.

Inlayed timber strips in the timber decking and in the concrete flooring lead the eye towards the continuous views into, through and out of the house, further enhancing the impression of transparency and dissolution between outdoor and indoor spaces and emphasizing the sense of passage or journey.