Silverstrand Villa by VERB + PARA

“The project was a 3,185 sq.ft villa located at Silverstrand, Hong Kong, a low-density residential area on a sloping site at the Eastern side of Hong Kong, facing the harbor of Port Shelter. The existing building is a four stories townhouse, with four bedrooms, split level of living and dining area, and a multi-purpose room. Our client is a whiskey lover, with his two teenage children, where the son loves to play the piano, and the daughter interested in fashion and art.

There are two goals where this project needs to be achieved. First, the villa exposed to the picturesque scenery of islands and a calm shore, the project require an interior that could extract the poetic quality of the scenery and be reverberated, form an environment that could lead contemplation, and evokes our primitive sensibilities. Second, to provide spaces that could engage in family gatherings and reinforce interaction.

Instead of having numbers of individual rooms of the existing building, we perceived the project can be a series of spaces that could be linked and allow interaction. We first removed one of the bedrooms and turned it into a library /family lounge, which became a junction connecting the three Bedrooms and creates an intimate gathering space for family members at night. We removed the existing balustrade at the dining area and converted the Kitchen, Dining, and Living into an environment that closely connected. The connection extends to a glimpse of the Bar Room behind the tinted glass of the fireplace at the Living area.

In term of architectural and design language applied, the design was inspired by the mood of Impressionist music masterpieces, the Gymnopedie No.1 by Erik Satie and Arabesque No.1 by Claude Debussy. In which the design aimed to address the quality of mellow and tenderness, through geometry, materials, and composition, with a continuous rhythm. Within an enclosure of Terrazzo at the Living area and the Marmorino wall behind the piano, it helps in creating the reverberation of the piano sound to fill the space. A crafted volume in timber texture prudently trimmed and positioned, it elevated the Kitchen and Dining Area and divided zones under a single atmosphere, set as a focus of the Living Area, as well allow the scenery of the shore and islands penetrated further deep to the Kitchen. Slabs of grey granite horizontally embedded at the base of the timber volume, as the last step of stair between the split levels, and lead to the fireplace and the visual connection of the Barroom. Where a slab of red marble vertically positioned, interlocking the split levels and became the backdrop of Dining Area. The red marble carries upward as a side wall and balustrade of the two stairs connecting the upper floors and placed parallel with the wall of timber bookshelves, where all the lighting coming behind the books from the shelves and diffuse to the library, together to create library atmosphere that is soft and intimate.