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Mario Kleff is a man who likes to do things his way. So, when the Pattaya-based architect was approached by two UK businessmen to design them a house of rare distinction, Mario agreed on condition that he was given a free creative hand, writes Robert Collins.
“That is the way I work and it is one of the reasons I am based here in Pattaya,” said the German-born managing director of the Wandeegroup.
“In Europe, the pressures of competitive tendering mean you have to compromise on creativity, but here that’s not the case. Every building I design is an original work of art. I don’t copy anyone else’s ideas.”
The design brief Mario’s UK clients gave him was simple: the house had to provide maximum security, a high degree of privacy and it had to be unique – three requirements which, according to Mario, fitted neatly with the Japanese philosophy of house design.
The resulting structure on Pratamnak Hill, scheduled for completion early in 2009, certainly fits the bill. Constructed on half a rai of land, the layout of the foundations is based on a character in the Japanese alphabet. Furthermore, the footprint of the building occupies the entire site. That’s not to say there is no garden – there is, but it is enclosed, along with the 80 sq m swimming pool, within the four, windowless exterior concrete walls. These tower almost 10 metres in height and range between 40cm and a metre in width. Access to the property is through a giant double door, almost five metres high, or through the up-and-over door to the car parking area, which is an integral part of the house itself.
Pool in courtyard
Safe and secure, this foreboding exterior hides a gem of a house with a massive 500 metres of living space. The solid front door opens onto a courtyard featuring a swimming pool which, along with the living area, occupies 98 per cent of the available land space.
On three sides of the pool there are distinctly separate, self-contained rooms – none of them are interconnected – while up above at mezzanine level is a huge lounge overlooking the pool with access to the flat roof space.
A Zen garden, complete with cold water koi tank, at the rear of the building is concrete, rocks and specially imported white sand, while underneath is a huge basement decked out with white marble and housing a lavish hamam – a Turkish bath complete with steam room, sauna, Jacuzzis and associated spa facilities.
In fact, the abundance of white is a key feature of the design philosophy. “This is a Japanese house not because of its design, but because of its concept,” said Mario.
“Japanese design has to be meaningful, not decorative. It is minimalist in which everything is functional and on this you can build creativity. The creative design of this house is in the engineering, not in the decoration. In fact, because the design is minimalist the only colour other than white is provided by a red tree which we imported from Japan for the Zen garden.
“The character of the house comes from its foundations while its heart is in its engineering. Engineering design tends to get overlooked in favour of decorative design, but engineering design is what gives a building its character.”
Scared by layouts
Mario admits that the prospective owners were less than thrilled when they saw his initial drawings. “In fact they were scared when they saw my layouts,” he said. “But a deal is a deal so I went ahead with my ideas. Now that the project is nearing completion they are getting increasingly more excited about it, although they are still not exactly sure what they are going to get!”
With such enormous dimensions for what is essentially a four-bedroom home, construction presented its own problems. Ten 10-metre high columns, some 6.5 metres wide, had to be constructed from pre-formed concrete blocks. These had to be specially made, which, according to Mario, was a ‘first’ in Thailand, and they required 2,200 one-inch diameter steel rods to reinforce them. It was the same story with the 23-metre steel girders. They were simply not available in such sizes in Thailand and so had to be made to order. Under the house no less than 98 pilings were put in.
As you would expect in a house of such magnitude, generous proportions abound wherever you look. The two bathrooms feature monsoon showers that teem water from a height of nine metres and there is ample room to cook up a storm in a kitchen with a whopping 49 sq m of floor space and 6.8 metres of headroom – the same height
as the huge lounge on the mezzanine floor.
This is not the first Japanese house Mario has designed and constructed, but it is his third in Thailand.
“I have designed several in other parts of the world over the years,” he said. “I was taught Zen design over a two-year period by a Japanese teacher in Japan and from him I learned about Japanese thinking. It combines maths and symmetry and, unlike European houses, the design of the structure reflects the personality of the owner rather than the decoration.
“Japanese design is meaningful not decorative, hence the lack of decoration in this particular house other than the red tree in the Zen garden. Even the furniture is minimalist and functional rather than decorative and is an integral part of the house design rather than an add-on after the building is completed. Tables and seats, for instance, are formed in concrete.”
Almost there
With the culmination of the year-long project now in sight, the Japanese house is just one of the Wandeegroup’s 30 or so ongoing projects, which include the high profile W Tower at Wongamat, a building in Dubai and a Christian church in New York.
But for sheer originality and individualism, the Japanese house at Pratamnak is probably unsurpassed. Ω
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