This mountain retreat, inland of Cyprus, gets cold in the winter and occasional snow. The project stands out from the rest of the blunt surrounding villas, by its unique form and composition of materials (concrete, corten steel, stone, timber).
The beautiful texture of the raw finishes has been highlighted with soft beams of direct and indirect lighting. The main focus of the lighting concept has been to highlight the play and composition of forms by concealing the light as much as possible and letting the walls and other surfaces stand out.
But it has not only been an exercise in morphology. The right balance of light levels within a context of very low-reflectance surfaces has meant careful consideration and measurements of the light levels with as little as possible luminaires.
The owners are art collectors and carefully placed installations of their dear friends artists in key locations in the house. Those are not collected for investment, but for pleasure and appreciation. The owners appreciate the final result of the lighting, but are aware of how much has been ‘taken out’ to allow for star-gazing and listening to the birds on the trees that have been intentionally left in semi-darkness.
The project has been fitted with LED sources throughout and scenes were dimmed to lowest agreeable level. The Back garden has minimial lighting to the open area. Outdoor luminaires have been chosen based on durability of housing i.e. stainless steel and hard anodised aluminium. The project in located in a mountainous area with existing trees kept and it was agreed to illuminate the trees as less as possible to allow for nocturnal animals to nest. There is almost zero uplighting component with luminaires aimed on stone walls and ground surface or uplighting canopies only. Light beams were controlled with maximum use of accessories (honecomb louvres and black cowls).
