Marble Portal

The organising move is one opening. A tall rectangular portal is cut through the front of the house, lined in figured marble and lit so the stone reads at night, and everything else on the elevation is kept deliberately plain so that the portal is unmistakably the way in. The set holds several studies worked up around that idea for the same brief: one where the portal is framed by a white surround and flanked by timber screens, one where it is pulled out into a deep timber-soffited porte-cochère wide enough to drive through, and a lower version where the upper floor is dropped and the ground plane opens into a covered dining loggia.