Twilight House

This full width rear extension creates a spacious open plan kitchen with oversize island, breakfast and bench area seating, with a hidden larder space. An internal level change to step down to dining and snug areas, create a flush connection with the garden, to connect further the inner and outer worlds of the space.

We were inspired by the house location for the Tom Ford film version of ‘A Single Man’ – the Schaffer Residence designed by John Lautner in 1948. The redwood timber and floor to ceiling glass provides a fantastical aspect, with expressed arms of timber linking with the trees surrounding it. In the Isherwood novel, it describes the setting of a home as remaining hidden, as if it belongs to a different world, open to its surroundings, to reveal all through magic in a forest clearing. Internally, all surfaces are material textures and purposefully reference a balanced masculine energy, with long format hand-made black bricks on a study side of the living space to connect with the external, natural plaster finish walls, dark herringbone flooring, walnut and green painted joinery, copper metallic highlights, with muted ceramics in the utility space forming a bespoke dog shower. At twilight, the light is soft and amber, like sunshine filtered through forest leaves, with the windows reflecting the trees.