Chris Briffa architects – Hanging home, 2011

#CANTILEVERHOUSE #CUBEHOUSE #MALTA

Chris Briffa architects – www.chrisbriffa.com

The house is located in a recent neighborhood composed by approximately twenty structures each by a different owner employing a different architect designed and built at the same time but with different styles and approaches.
Chris Briffa Architects, considering the client request and the property dimension, designed a white cube house with very few apertures and a narrow but gripping side-garden. The house is cantilevered over the pool in order to liberate more space in the garden. Moreover, this layout provides a generous outdoors area compared with the ones in the similar surrounding properties.

From the street, a steel staircase bridges over the underlying front garden and invites us beneath the sheltering white mass and high louvered doors, similar to traditional Maltese ai???persjani , lead to the interior.
The dining room extends into the garden on a cantilevered concrete slab enclosed by three glass walls, hovering above the deep end of the pool surrounded by olive trees. This perimeter garden enjoys privacy from the street thanks to an elevated, semi-basement room which houses the home office.
The long living area a double-height volume attached to a low one accommodates the piano salon, the sitting room and the stairs to the garage and the kitchen area.
One of the most interesting internal spaces is the partly underground home-office, which shares a wall with the pool while looking up to the olive trees and the cantilevered dining slab.
The water-based under-floor heating system, the possibility of cross-ventilation and the space above the main staircase used as a cooling tower keep the house warm in winter and cool in the summer months.

The hanging home pure and weightless from the outside, slowly revealing its balmy spaces as one explores the interior is the result of a healthy client-architect relationship.

CREDITS

architects: Chris Briffa architects

location: Naxxar, Malta

surface: 250 m²

year/status: 2011/built

structure: Ivan Buttigieg

materials: reinforced concrete, steel, glass, timber & natural stones

project team: Darren Cortis, Lawrence Briffa

client/contractor: Mr & Mrs Dalli

photography: David Pisani