TOWN HOUSE OUTDOORS UTILIZATION
For this project I was recommended by someone I had previously worked for on 2 different projects in France, a golf course on a Countryside Estate and a Parisian Hotel Particulier garden.
This is a large urban house, enclosed in 4 walls with a relatively small garden, 150 m2, mostly ornamental and mainly serving as a décor, a view for the house, it was not the great life space that the new owner wanted it to be. The challenge here was space optimization with an extra technical constraint due to the garden’s very limited sun exposure.
The interior design was masculine, sleek, neutral tones with bright color touches in some furniture elements, so we decided to do the exact opposite for the outdoors to create coherence by way of contrast. So, the main color is bright green, from the vegetation, with white furniture.
The design goal here, is what true design means: visually pleasing optimization of a space (or item) function, fit for the current lifestyle of the owner, so we went for jacuzzi and outside bar instead of swimming pool, playground and dining table.
To make up for the relatively small surface we created trompe-l-oeil mirror effects along with some groundwork to shape different levels that are very useful to give an impression of space.
We used the same floor surface than the inside to extend it outside, to indicate continuity, along with ceramic pots to create a visual structure.
To link indoor and outdoor we decided to break the indoor masculine neutral tones with bright fresh ones for the landscape to be viewed as a green relaxing oasis with pure and simple lines, making it easy to read hence attractive.
The signature on this project is its timeless elegance. This project has been done over 15 years ago and it has not lost its appeal…this could still be done today.
Logistic was pretty classic, due to the urban location we could not use heavy machineries to bring in materials or remove rubbles, everything was done “by hand” with wheelbarrows, buckets and shovels.
The landscape project was decided after the interior renovation, so a lot of protections and rigorous execution had to be taken into account before starting reshaping and building.
The outdoor space was too small to properly display art and as there were many art works inside already it was decided not to add more.
