How do you bring sunlight into a living room all day on a steep, north-east-facing slope, and keep a pool garden completely private when the street runs right below it? That was the brief. This is how we solved it.
The house stands on Svábhegy in the Buda hills, on a quiet street surrounded by woodland and listed historic buildings. A neglected house used to stand on the plot. We demolished it completely, and the position of its large old terrace set the boundaries of the new house and the heights of its levels. The client has a busy social life and asked for two things: room for guests both indoors and out, and no one able to see into their lives. As general designers, we were responsible for the entire design of the three-storey villa: not only the architecture and the interior, but also the structural engineering, the electrical systems and the building services.
01 · Sunlight on a north-east slope
CHALLENGE
The plot is very steep and falls towards the north-east, down to the street. The living room is on the ground floor, at garden level, which meant that its hillside walls, facing south-east and south-west, would have been underground. It would have received no light from exactly the directions where most of it comes from.
OUR SOLUTION
Around the southern corner of the house, along the south-east and south-west sides, we cut back the hillside and created a large, L-shaped sunken courtyard. It is a solution we use often. On these sides, too, the living room now looks onto a sunny courtyard instead of into the ground. The sun comes in from the east in the morning, from the south during the day and from the south-west in the afternoon, and only leaves the house late in the day.
02 · A living room without walls
CHALLENGE
The client entertains a lot. The living room had to be spacious and airy, and in good weather it had to work as one space with the garden and the terrace.
OUR SOLUTION
The living and dining area is enclosed in glass on three sides. For this we used Solarlux cero sliding windows: their frames are so slim, and the opening panels so large, that the living room can be opened almost entirely to the garden and the forest, as if it had no walls at all. To suit the furniture layout, the media wall went on the south-east side, but even this “wall” is largely glazed, so the morning sun is not lost.
03 · A pool no one can see
CHALLENGE
The street runs in front of the house, at the bottom of the plot. The pool, the terrace and the living room are all on the street side, and the client asked that none of them be visible from there.
OUR SOLUTION
The terrain allowed us to set the house high. The ground floor sits well above the eye level of passers-by, so no one on the street can see up to the pool, the large terrace behind it or the living room. Behind the house there is forest, and the plot cannot be entered from the upper street either. No tall fence or screening was needed: the terrain alone makes the garden completely private.
04 · The forest on the façade
CHALLENGE
From the street, only the upper floor is visible. This is where the children’s rooms are, along with the master bedroom and its bathroom. In the bedrooms a curtain is enough, but the bathroom window had to be screened permanently while still letting the light in.
OUR SOLUTION
A bespoke perforated screen was placed in front of the bathroom. Its pattern reproduces the forest behind the house: the outlines of branches and leaves were cut out of a composite panel. The pattern was cut on both the outer and the inner face, so the panel has real depth and does not look like a thin membrane. From the street it reads as an ornament; from inside it filters the light.
05 · Daylight on the lowest level too
CHALLENGE
Because of the steep plot, the house has three storeys, and the lowest one is partly set into the hill. This is where the wellness area, the guest suite and the garage went, and none of them could feel like a dark basement.
OUR SOLUTION
The lower level has a plunge pool, a sauna and a gym, next to a guest suite that receives full natural light. The four-car garage is sized for luxury cars: the bays are wide enough for the car doors to open comfortably, without knocking into anything. It looks more like a living room than a garage. The slope pays off on the upper floor as well: one of the children’s rooms opens directly onto the back garden, and from there into the forest to play.
06 · A crystalline roof, precise details inside and out
CHALLENGE
Among the listed buildings of Svábhegy we wanted neither a traditional pitched roof nor a flat box. The house had to be contemporary and still blend into the landscape. In a building this restrained, every inaccuracy shows.
OUR SOLUTION
The house has a bespoke, crystalline, gently sloping roof that blends into the forest behind it. Technically, it was a very demanding roof. The whole building was made with the same care, inside and out: the junctions are sharp and precise throughout, the eaves are razor-thin and the cladding fits exactly. Details like these are what give a contemporary house its character, and they were only possible with a very good contractor.
“Exclusive, but not showy. It blends into the forest behind it, and that’s one of the reasons I love it.” – István Bényei
The result
A villa on a steep, north-east-facing plot, with a living room the sun moves around all day. The pool garden and the terrace cannot be seen from the street, and the living room, glazed on three sides, opens fully to the garden and the forest. The house is made for a busy social life, outdoors and in, and from nowhere does it give away how large it really is.
