VILLA E - BOLD LUXURY
Part A

For his residential project, our client, who is based in a small town in Munich's bacon belt, initially acquires one of the rare inner-city plots of land together with a villa standing on it. The house, built in the mid-1990s, previously belonged to a rather Hanseatic billionaire. Architects recommended its complete demolition to our client, but the latter did not want this. Studio Alexander Fehre was then commissioned to redesign the villa. What should the result look like? Our client had rather vague ideas about this. In order not to miss the client with our own idea of a hedonistic luxury life, we first created three different styles and presented them to the client. He decided - for two. And much more important: Our customer felt understood. By presenting our renderings, we were able to convince him that he would get what he expected for his estimated budget. In this way we earned our client's trust, which in the end was so great that he even entrusted us with the selection of towels and in the new house he was only responsible for the clothes and cutlery himself.

ENTRANCE AREA

The entrance foyer meets the desires of both husband and wife with a superabundance of light. One specific request was that this welcome area be light and open, so we created a very special spatial situation to this end. All the walls on the upper and ground levels are covered in aluminium tubes. The daylight that enters through a skylight is caught by the walls and flows downwards. Here and there, superimposed tubes with LED points at each end contribute additional lighting. The result is a veritable palace of light with a vertical flow, which is further enhanced by an anodised aluminium curtain that hangs down from the upper level between the flights of stairs. Cascading light rings in the centre of the foyer and coved lighting around the surrounding walls set illuminated accents. The latter fulfils another one of our client’s more niche requests: when his football team Bayern Munich wins, the light changes to red.

We have incorporated another gimmick for him in the entrance area, something James Bond certainly would have appreciated. In the cloakroom, with its reflective metallic wallpaper in champagne, a sideboard floats in front of a huge mirror that contains a circular recess. A code control in the drawer opens up a secret compartment, revealing the keys to the owner’s extensive car collection, which would have pleased the famous secret agent with its Rolls Royce, Ferrari and Lamborghini.

The home cinema is opposite the cloakroom. The room has three windows, but can be darkened by means of a deep blue velvet, wraparound curtain. Circles are stitched into the velvet, referencing the cascading rings of light in the foyer. Stars shimmer against the ceiling and a refrigerator in the centre of the room also shines thanks to underlit surfaces.

COOK, EAT, COMMUNICATE

At first, the kitchen is hardly recognisable as such. With the exception of a wine refrigerator, all kitchen appliances are concealed within a monolithic block, clad in brass plate. Its doors can be recessed at the sides, so that it remains open. The worktop is a cantilevered marble block, which appears to have been sculpted from a single block, but is in fact composed of three individual sections.

The family eating area is next to the kitchen. For this space, we designed an oversized yellow sofa with a steel substructure that appears to float in front of a mirrored room divider. It has become the family’s favourite spot in no time at all. In front of the sofa stands a circular dining table made from Corian. Its form is reflected in a ceiling mirror circumscribed by cove lighting. A brass room divider leads to the living area, which is defined by an sumptuous sofa landscape and a gas fireplace.

One for all

The living area on the ground floor is spread over a single large room that encircles the foyer. The space is completely open. Only the dining and living areas can be separated by glass doors that slide into a room divider. Thanks to wooden panelling on all the inner walls, the space is a unified whole. Brass inlays set into the wood have a circular form that again cites the light rings in the foyer. Polished steel door jambs and lintels with integrated smart home controls reflect the room. Parquet flooring runs throughout the living area, with a specially treated surface that enables it to be used in the kitchen.