Glass Cabinet in Open Air

This house has a whole zone that sits under a roof without being indoors. The soffit is lined in long timber slats with black cylinder lights fixed beneath it; the entrance side is paved in block and faced in black marble, while another corner is wood decking against a white wall, open to the trees and the boundary fence. Both corners are fully roofed and closed on one side only. Sun and wind reach them all day.

Everything we made for this house is reclaimed teak: the big glass-fronted display cabinets standing in these covered corners, and the entrance set of full-height cupboards with a bench and drawers beneath it. The timber front door with its digital lock, the slatted soffit and the decking are the house's own work. At the entrance the cabinet runs the length of the marble wall and stops exactly where the frame of the glass door begins, without crossing into the opening by so much as an inch. A fit like that comes only from measuring on site.

Everything here follows the same three rules. First, every piece is lifted clear of the floor on legs, so the shadow line beneath the furniture carries on from one corner of the house to the next. Second, every pull is a narrow slot worked into the door face, with nothing projecting to catch a sleeve and no metal handle interrupting the front anywhere. Third, the fronts are divided into tall narrow bays of much the same width, repeated the whole length of the run, which is why a cabinet glazed in glass and a cupboard closed in solid teak still read as one set while standing in different corners doing different jobs.

A place like this asks something of furniture that a closed room never does. Dust off the road and rain blown in sideways are simply normal here, so the glass doors are not there only to look well: they are what keeps everything on display visible every day without having to be lifted down and wiped every week. The lower doors slide rather than swing, because this is the way into the house and a door opening outwards blocks the path every time somebody walks past. And because the carcasses stand clear of the floor, the paving can be swept or hosed without the legs ever standing in water, which over years is the whole difference in a house where the floor genuinely gets wet.