Modern Mansion on a Breathtaking Slope | Architecture & Design, House Tour

Today we have arrived at one of our absolutely best houses which is nearly completed. And today's episode will actually be extremely interesting because the house is not fully finished yet and we can still see what it looks like from the inside. Make yourself comfortable and let's go. From the main driveway we are welcomed by such a substantial concrete fence. But the point is that it's a concrete box that extends in two specific directions, serving as retaining walls. And thanks to such a concrete box around the entire plot, we were able to form the actual relief of our house. The plot here was quite complicated, 29 feet of relief drop if I'm not mistaken. We had to place the house strategically to ensure that it had the most magnificent view of the reservoir from the top floor. For this we shaped the entire landscape with meticulous attention in such a way that we now have a drive-in area at the very foot of this hill itself. And we have a flat area in the middle of our plot so that it serves as an inner courtyard. So the people that live here do not move on their land on a slope, but have flat areas where they can enjoy themselves. Therefore actually we have implemented such a stepped relief into the main volume of our house. We have a main floor here which is thoughtfully elevated and acts as a second floor, especially if we count from the main road. And on top of it there is a block. We turned it slightly on purpose so that its main window from the primary bedroom faces the beautiful reservoir. This corner actually of the third floor, it's not accidental. We measured it precisely so that the view from the window would fall neatly between the trees and open up a view of the reservoir. In this part you see garage doors, but it's not for cars. It's actually a parking spot for a motorboat which can be easily rolled out onto the water surface across the road. And in fact the same room is divided in two. Its second half houses staff, including a security guard which is convenient. And it will be as if this room isn't visible at all. When we drive on to our plot, we are greeted by such an interesting, so to speak, landscaping of our parking area. These are concrete slabs. The formwork between them was only recently removed. Gravel will be poured here and there will be such an interesting pavement. That is on this side our visitors park under the open sky, so to speak. Further by the way from this parking lot there is also such a small niche where you can hide quads, scooters, sports equipment if you will. Actually that's why our house has three main entrances. The first is through the garage. A second entrance into the same garage space is accessible, but through the standard hinged doors, which is actually convenient because there's no need to squeeze through some garage doors, no need to fully open them in winter and chill the room. And there is a third option, a guest one. When you have arrived by car and you don't need to enter any rough spaces, you can immediately go up the grand staircase and enter the main room, the main living room. And to further enhance the already impressive wow effect emanating from the house itself, we plate it up with cantilever like this. That is, this cantilever serves as a small canopy over the garage doors above the front door. We suddenly have a view of the most beautiful part of our entire house. That is, if we ascend and look upwards, we have a literally 16.4 feet cantilever above our head with this cube, which is turned diagonally and looks straight between the trees at the reservoir. Actually, this is indeed the main idea of the house. It looks exceptionally good and truly impresses every single person who comes to visit you from this particular angle. On the left side, our garage continues and there's a cool feature here, which unfortunately is hidden behind building materials. But let's go down to the garage again and I'll show you what it looks like from the inside. That is, if we enter the house not through the grand staircase and the beauty we see when we look up, we have a small corridor here which is separated by this concrete wall from the garage space to make it quite more comfortable and somehow to decorate this area in a more homely way. And to preserve this idea, this truly astonishing wow effect from our cantilever and the unique hanging of this third floor box, we made a large panoramic window here. Look, this is a skylight that goes about 65.6 feet ahead to the very end of our corridor, through which actually this console is visible. In the evening, it will also be illuminated from below, creating an exceptionally beautiful and truly captivating angle that will also gently remind you of just how incredibly cool your house is. Right now, we are on the roof of our garage and we had this crazy idea to plant a golf lawn here, so you can throw eco-degradable golf balls from the roof straight forward the pond. It seems like a dream to me, standing on the roof of your very own house and just throwing a ball as far as possible is indeed in everyone's head when they opt to build a house on a terrain. Because this valley stretches out ahead, you can not only look at it, but also interact with it, if I may say so. Alright, let's come back, literally speaking, down to earth and I'll tell you about the technical implementation of our facades. As you can see, here we have thin porcelain tiles laid out on the facade, meaning we have an aluminum framework where it would be clearly visible. Right there, we will show it a bit later. An aluminum framework that is not just placed on corners, so to speak, but here we have welded such cantilever triangles from black metal to increase the depth of our facade. That is, these slopes are actually hollow inside. This is visible now in the place where they are not finished. And this particular effect, it creates the volume of our house. And actually, in support of this, our third floor diagonal, we really wanted to slightly complicate the dynamics of our house facade. And so right here, in fact, these envelopes are indeed placed. Friends, in this very house, we developed not only the architecture, not only the construction and engineering design of the exterior, but we also developed the interior design. I'll show you a couple of interior design pictures now. In my opinion, it turned out to be an unusual style, yet very typical of our clients. We generally always make interiors very personalized, where our clients will be comfortable in. This is, of course, a modern style. We are a full cycle architecture firm, meaning we handle all stages of project documentation. And I think now you understand that for a good project, you can feel safe counting on us. You see the link to our website, our contacts in the description below this video. The most fascinating thing about this over is that actually this facade plane doesn't slope equally at all. That is on that particular side of the house. This specific paneling has a marginally smaller extension than in this part. Indeed. And we ended up with a truly complex parametric facade where each welded console made of black metal has its own unique length. As a result, the facade is slightly turned inside out, creating such complex dynamics and structure of our house. Particular attention deserves the way how we mounted this facade. As you can see, this is thin porcelain stoneware. It has very complex angles, only 90 degrees. And in order to technically implement them well, we cut them at 45 degrees. That is, if we look here, the tile was literally sawed. That is, it's unthinkable to do such a thing on facades at all. This is an extremely delicate job. Indeed, a difficult one. Usually, this task is done in interior design and not always because it is quite difficult. Well, and actually our classic technique, which we do in almost all houses with a flat roof. But for some reason, people still ask us the way we provide for guttering and roof drainage. So you see, while everything here is not yet finished, you see there is a downspout and it goes into the drainage system. That is, all these envelopes, they create not only the volume of our house, but behind them. It's also very cool to hide the entire stormwater system. We have a receiving gutter from the roof. It must have leaf catchers to prevent any debris from getting in. It definitely has a warm heating cable hidden inside, so that the water doesn't freeze and our water drain doesn't burst. And all of this is neatly diverted into a drainage well, meaning you won't have any swamps or puddles on your property after the rain. And at the same time, you won't see a single pipe coming from the roof. In my opinion, it is a very cool and exceptionally beautiful solution. Another one of the main features that we often use in design, especially when it comes to two story houses, is the separate distinct flooring between the second and first floors. What do I mean? We have the second floor slab and the first floor slab. In a standard classical construction, we make one solid slab 7.8 inches thick, which serves as both the roof for the first floor and the floor for the second. But because of this, we end up with such a very thin volume here. And visually, it always seems like the second floor does not stand reliably on our ceiling. Even later, when it's all covered up with additional layers of insulation, when a ventilated facade is made, this lower part kind of flows into the first floor. And it turns out to be quite an unattractive connection. We avoided it here. We have actually poured two monolithic floors. One is above, the other is slightly below. And they cross very beautifully with each other. You see that the second floor, it cuts into our envelope, as if to lie on the ceiling of the first floor. A very beautiful technique that emphasizes actually our second floor's volume, which does not hide this floor thickness. And because of that, it appears more static and more reliable. Our first floor is also perfectly fine, because you see there's still such a significantly large distance from the windows to the roof left, which just emphasizes this absolutely correct joint of the two floors. I wanted to show the from this angle as well, because I really like it visually. Here you can see the entire dynamics of our house. Our third floor is turned this way, and from here the terrace is nicely visible, where it will be quite delightful to go out in the summer to have some tea. In all these angled seams, we deliberately used two tiles, because otherwise we would have had twice as many material leftovers, and it would have been pure madness, so to speak, to do that. You agree with me? Well, I suggest we go to the inner courtyard of the house, and Andris will tell us more about them. Well, let's go higher. From this side, our house looks like it has two floors, although from other side we have three floors and huge walls. Regarding the walls, just look at the amount of concrete that was used for those retaining walls. From here, we see such a beautiful house. I will now show you a really useful life hack that you can use in your architectural design projects. This is a life hack about ceiling. In our climate, floors are thick, that means a 0.6 feet concrete slab, 0.9 feet of insulation, roof sloping and a parapet. And all this together gives us almost 3.2 feet thick floors, that is, 2.2 feet, 2.9 feet of ceiling, so that we don't have such thick floors in our projects. To my mind, the thinner, the more beautiful. We are making these bevels, and as you can see, we are crafting such a gray parapet there, that is, we see the volume of the house in white, and above it there is a parapet, and this gray parapet is the ceiling, meaning it's recessed relative to the facade and in a different color. Thus, it allows us to bring forward the beautiful part of the thin facade, which notably has these bevels going straight into the parapet with very thin, delicate lines. And the thick slab behind it is indeed very useful as an architectural node. It makes modern architecture in our climate just as beautiful as in Spain, Miami. Moreover, look at how it's done. If the house is white, then inserts between windows are made of anthracite colored laminum. This is specifically designed to create the illusion of a continuous row of glazing here. In fact, there is a separate inserted window in the facade, cantilever of the house, unfolded top floor to the water reservoir. And right here we tried to preserve this pine tree, which has lived here for ages before. And actually, this is the tree for which we called the dendrologist, around which the whole project was built. Because when we arrived, saw this pine, we decided that the pine must definitely stay. This part of the plot, let's say, belongs to the living room, meaning the entire territory is divided into planes. If the lower plane of the relief is an entrance, then this area of the relief, this zone, is intended for communication. That is, people can come out of the living room here, they can communicate, there will be a small lawn here, there will be some beautiful little trees here. And in general, it's a space for communication. And above us, we have another plane of relief, and it's kind of for relaxation. There is a bathhouse, there is also a swimming pool, a fire pit, and some sun loungers at your disposal. Thus, you see, the entire relief of a vast area is divided into zones. Entry zone, communication zone, relaxation zone, and there is also an upper zone. This is an area where you can go out into this beautiful pine forest. Each of the zones has its own functionality. Don't be afraid to buy plots with a large difference in elevation. All of this can be very cleverly played out in terms of the functionality of each of the plates of this relief. Right now, we're standing on concrete slabs, so to speak, on plates, and you can see how they're made. And if we go higher, we can see how they are fully reinforced. Many people ask me where to buy such beautiful landscape tiles as in your projects. So which store should we go to, hypothetically? Guys, the truth is nowhere. I'll share a secret. No one ever actually buys these landscape tiles. They are not sold anywhere at all. All these slabs are molded right on site. What is important to know, you tamp down the base with sand and gravel mix, you pour concrete. The concrete grade should be from 350 to 500. That is, this is very hard concrete, roughly the same as that from which bridges are made. It is also very important to monitor the moisture absorption of this concrete. It is polished on top, covered with water repellent agent, and you can leave these slabs. They will last a very long time. They will not crack. The infill can be anything. There can be gravel, pebbles, crushed marble. You can plant grass here in a thin layer. You can plant moss, and then there will be no need to mow. Overall, a tremendous range of fantasy. I even saw when they pour forest cones here, and it looks very cool. That is, the filling can actually be anything. The slabs are made on site. Here is such a small utility-based area, because there's a need to store lawnmowers somewhere. And here is such a little pit. We can enter it as if it's a bunker. And there will be, accordingly, a utility room, where a gardener can use it to roll out the lawnmower and mow exactly this part of the territory. On a plot with a large relief, there should be two such rooms. One at the bottom, and it is there, where the security room is. The second one here, well, in order to maintain this territory. In general, a colossal amount of concrete was used in this house. I adore concrete. Here, everything is practically made of it. The retaining walls, and the fence. By the way, more concrete was used into these walls, and this fence, than into the house itself. Because we only see what stands out, over the relief. But you have to understand, there's a huge slope behind us, and we're going further down. And many ask, how is it done? Where are the buttresses? Why doesn't the slope press on this concrete wall, and it doesn't collapse there? I'll show you the base build, and you'll see how the concrete structures function to counterweight this slope. How we designed it. Perhaps, it will also be useful to many. We specifically wanted to show you the house at this stage, so you could see many aspects that are not as visible upon completion, when the ground surface is leveled here, and we will see 0.6 feet of concrete there. But how much of it is poured here? There's a cement pool over there. Let's go, take a look at it. Look at these beautiful landscape steps. We also molded it out of concrete here. They are all of different lengths, and they seem to merge into the landscape. Here, there will be a lawn everywhere. You can plant tall cereal grass, and the steps will seem to dissolve into this slope. And the step cantilevers out, creating an impression that it is very thin too. And it gives this effect of plates levitating above the relief. Very beautiful effect. Look at this pool. This pool is actually molded from concrete, which is quite remarkable. Membranes are constructed on the basis. And after the sauna, you can leisurely walk down these steps, jump into this refreshing pool, swim, and then walk across such a charming bridge over the water. Here, you will have sun loungers located. A fire pit molded from concrete, around which there can be chairs. It's a venue to barbecue on the fire. Go up the concrete-made stairs to the upper level. And as I told you, there's a level with nature, with the forest. And we gradually move away from such an industrial driveway, gradually rising. We have more and more and more nature. And the upper level ends with pure nature. That is, there was a concept in it. Going into the woods for mushrooms. And so, this is country life. This is just very fascinating. I would like to draw your attention to one small detail. This actually is the anti-slip ribbing on the concrete surface. That is, when concrete is molded, different things can be done with its texture. That is, you can effectively take such a scraper tool, and run it over the concrete, creating lines like these. These lines create friction with the sole, and the person after the pool is safe, because the tile is slip proof. Here, I am going to show you how it's done in my house. I have walls made of such concrete, polished and coated with varnish. And it looks very expensive. Here's the concrete, in fact, without any finishing. No terraced board on the floor here. There is the same staircase here, yes, with the same anti-slip contour. Here, the walls are molded from a slightly different concrete, and are polished accordingly. And all this does not require finishing. It looks cool as it is. Everyone thinks that you need to lay some expensive tiles here, but then these tiles will start chipping at the seams, because moisture gets into the micropores, the moisture turns into ice, and the tiles begin to crack, split, and so on. And here's concrete, actually. It requires completely no maintenance, and it looks very beautiful. I'll show you another thing now. And this is indeed a real challenge, because opposite our stunningly beautiful modern house, which I've been talking about for so long, completely white, with elegantly thin floors, with an enormous front of panoramic glass, the client asked, just imagine, for a log sauna. Typical bathhouse should be timber, right? That is, everyone's used to the idea of a bathhouse made of wood. When it comes to us, we never actually design log houses. How to match this log cabin with a modern house? I will tell you about a few tricks we use to construct a log bathhouse, and also make it seem modern. The first is the timber itself. You see, this is a shaped timber. It is quite large, and it provides such an even vertical joint at the cross cuts, that is, an even vertical line. That means no round items, which stand one on top of the other, filled with oakum, or alternatively filled with moss, as it happens, or perhaps a small rope. That is, there is no such tradition. There is, in fact, just a straight vertical line, The next technique is the shape of the house itself. That is, its L-shape gives us such a long vertical line, because actually log houses are usually like the neighbors. I mean, typical and copy-pasted, so to say. It's due to factors like energy efficiency, and so on. It's usually just a box. We aim to create a long structure, which repeats the house's shape here. You see, this house floor is very long, stretching across the entire plot, and the bathhouse is across the entire plot too. The next point is that in a log house, you cannot make a straight ribbon front of direct panoramic glazing, is impossible to achieve. This is due to the design of the timber, because it has load-bearing walls. The entire load in the log rests on the cross cuts, but at the same time, the walls bear the load from the roof. We can't just cut part of the wall. It must be combined with half-timbering, a very complex structural system. Because of different shrinkage, the wood, accordingly, the glass may crack, something may deform. And we chose a very interesting path. You see, we cut out individual windows, thus not reduce the load-bearing capacity of the wall. The windows were made in black wooden frames, and the entire log house was made anthracite. That is, we painted it entirely in one color. What does this give us? In fact, when we look from a distance, since there is a very large light from the roof here, the entire façade goes into the shadow. Because it all merges into shadow, from afar it seems there's a continuous row of panoramic glass. Because glass is always darker than the façade. But when you make the façade anthracite, your glasses, they kind of merge into one line. The same trick is implemented in our modern house. There's an anthracite laminum inset between the individual glass panes. Just as here, due to the large overhang, due to the color, and due to the dark window frames of the correct glasses, from afar it seems that this is a completely panoramic house. Such simple, it would seem, solutions that surprisingly allowed us to reconcile this traditional log house with our modern day house. I'd like to draw attention to a part that seems not very significant, yet gives this house a modern look. Here we have a pillar, hidden, with expansion joints for support adjustment, in case of house settling, like lowering or raising. And we covered this pillar with such a screen, made of slats. It would seem a very conventional technique, but it again comes from modern architecture, and it again makes this timber house more modern. Speaking of the roof, here we stand, and it seems to us that the roof is straight, that it extends forward. But in reality, it's just a pitched roof with a standing seam. If we go around this bathhouse from the back, we will see it. Here, we explored around the bathhouse, and here is another level, another driveway. From here we see the roof slope, that is, it's a standing seam roof, it's single pitched. This very trick, which separates the entrance area of the bathhouse, that is, a screen made of bars, which is taken from modern architecture. A huge lantern that illuminates the entire entrance area, and here it is precisely seen how the concrete slabs are made, that is, they are currently laying out reinforcement mesh, and have set up the formwork. That is such an initial stage, here. Next, concrete will be poured here. And that's not all. There is the next level. We've seen a staircase there, at the pool. Let's go up these stairs, because at first glance it might seem to lead to nowhere, but in fact, it actually leads to such an incredibly beautiful forest. Let's go up and just look at the breathtaking view. Guys, this concrete staircase here takes us up to a small observation platform. You see, there is, in fact, still a very small portion of the plot placed between our fence and the neighbor's fence. And this part of the site can be used as a viewing area. Just look at the magnificent view from here. Give us a like if you truly enjoyed it. Subscribe to our channel. If you're dreaming of a modern house, you know precisely who to order it from. Enjoy yourselves.