Set on a steep hillside in Ekali, at the edge where the city dissolves into nature, this residence negotiates a delicate boundary — the threshold between the structured urban fabric and the openness of the landscape beyond. From this condition emerges the project’s central concept: the idea of a “terminal line,” as described by Preston Scott Cohen — a spatial and material frontier where contrasting orders meet, overlap, and transform one another.
In this house, the “terminal line” is made visible through materiality and form. The façade composition of render and stone is not simply aesthetic; it embodies this duality.
The stone, tactile and grounded, anchors the building to the slope, connecting it to the natural terrain. The render, smooth and light, gestures toward the constructed, urban condition. Together they interweave in abstract, fluid patterns, forming a continuous yet fluctuating surface that expresses the meeting of city and nature.
The building massing reinforces this dialogue. Instead of a single monolithic volume, the house unfolds as a series of interlocking and slightly offset geometries with soft, curved edges — like the dispersed fabric of a small hillside village.
Each volume responds to its own orientation, view, and topographic condition, creating a sense of settlement rather than object.
This composition not only breaks down the scale of the house but also allows it to breathe within its site, embracing light, shadow, and landscape as integral design elements.
Timber pergolas trace the organic contours of the architecture, extending the built form into the landscape and enhancing the sense of continuity between interior and exterior space.
The result is a house that sits precisely on the line between order and freedom, structure and erosion — a residence that feels both composed and grown, both urban and natural. It is an architecture that mediates rather than divides, transforming the edge of the city into a living, inhabitable threshold — a contemporary settlement at the border of Ekali.
