The World of Interiors

stairs that pays homage to the external steps of Adalberto Libera’s
Villa Malaparte on Capri. Other references – such as the implu-
vium in the drawing room that unites the two wings of the edifice

• hark back to ancient Rome. At first sight this seems the modern
  conversation space of a refined collector of Far Eastern and colo-
  nial art and antique furniture. But a sudden breeze alerts you to
  its most original feature: a skylight programmed to retract in fine
  weather and close (as it does when I visit) at the first drop of rain.
  On facing walls in the drawing room two early 18th-century
  Japanese painted screens invite the outside in; the owner loves ‘the
  way the clouds and sky and pine trees of the screens flow out into
  the landscape’. This central hub is in the conceptual scheme that
  underpin the house a ‘Library of Memory’
  displaying the owner’s cherished objects. It
  is a library for things not books – the latter
  are stacked on shelves on the other side of the
  walls a sleeve of culture turned inside out.
  One recurrent theme of any Lazzarini
  Pickering house is its transformability. Here
  laminated metal panels both connect and
  separate inside spaces creating long vistas
  down the two wings. When opened ventila-
  tion panels set into the walls create a dramatic
  enfilade to channel breezes inside playing
  mirror games with the lawn trees and sky.
  On sunny days electric fabric screens recast
  views in impressionistic black and white.
  Bedrooms are arranged like train com-
  partments down the longest wing so that
  when you sit in bed with the sunscreens up

you can almost reach out and touch the surrounding woods and

meadows. Behind each bed mounted on a panel that continues

onto the ceiling above is a De Gournay handpainted wallpaper

screen with patterns in antique silvered gilt designed in collabo-

ration with Lazzarini Pickering. Referencing the owner’s love of

Japanese art one elaborates on a cherry-blossom motif another

a weeping-willow theme yet another a school of carp.

Other purpose-designed details include a huge sage-green

curving sofa in the main living room made to accommodate a

whole houseful of guests with ease but also in Pickering’s words to

‘act as a hinge figuring the rotation of the building’s two volumes’.

The garden holds a few surprises too: a scatter of fairy-tale fol-

lies – among them a copper tree house with

the Gothic frisson of something Catherine

Morland might have expected to find at

Northanger Abbey – and a pair of rainwa-

ter ponds below the decked infinity pool.

They may not look like much but these

chalk ponds almost brought the whole

project to a halt when three great crested

newts – a strictly protected species – were

discovered in the smaller pond. ‘The whole

site was cordoned off’ the owner remem-

bers. ‘And we had to dig the larger pond

and persuade them to move house.’ They

obliged and now two families of three live

in close proximity in an area of outstanding

natural – and architectural – beauty $

Lazzarini Pickering Architetti. Ring 00 39 063

210 305 or visit lazzarinipickering.com

Top: the cherry-blossom panel in the spare bedroom is one of the pieces designed by the architects with De Gournay. ‘We wanted to explore the papier peint tradition’ says Carl Pickering.
Above: the tree house designed by Richard Craven is faced in copper that has acquired a bronze patina over time. Suspended by the trees its complex rigging was done by sailmakers
from Chichester. Opposite: the longer cantilevered wing contains three bedrooms. The circular viewing platform in front was designed as a spot to watch the sun setting over the vale below