Stradella I
Stradella I was designed with an emphasis on privacy, with a low key presence from the street. The concept was to conceal the 12,000sf living space and not to draw a lot of attention the expansive footprint of the home. Once inside, the home reveals its true nature of highly fascinating and unique features exclusive to this residence.
Stradella I was designed with an emphasis on privacy, with a low key presence from the street. The concept was to conceal the 12,000sf living space and not to draw a lot of attention the expansive footprint of the home. Once inside, the home reveals its true nature of highly fascinating and unique features exclusive to this residence.
Kevin hand selected the Italian marble slabs that adorn the kitchen countertops. Note the 100mm (4”) thick slabs on the kitchen island. The lime-stone floors were hand selected from blocks hewn from a quarry in Europe
A true scullery adjacent to the main kitchen provides unfettered access to serious cooking and catering. This allows all the heavy cooking to be done behind the scenes, keeping the main kitchen available for presentations and gathering without pots and pans being strewn about.
Kevin hand selected the Italian marble for the scullery. Cabinetry and millwork was imported from Spain
This image shows the dining room and family room. There is a continuous wall of 60’ of floor to ceiling windows that wrap around the pool, pro-viding views from multiple vantage points in the home.
The floor to ceiling windows are of German origin and utilize high security impact glass throughout the residence. Kevin first saw them on a job-site in Germany in 2019. Two years later, he wasn’t able to find someone to source the windows until he saw them again on a project in 2021 just north of Lake Como. From there, he was able to pinpoint a manufacturer that could deliver German frames with the high security glass required for our projects
Kevin traveled extensively to source this marble for the secondary bathrooms. He wanted a very specific look of white and grey tones. Normally Calcatta marble includes browns and gold veining. Kevin tracked down a specific quarry and within that quarry, a very specific layer of marble that produced the look seen in the Stradella residence.
Note that we had the countertops made from the same slabs of marble as the walls; that was a design decision guided by Lynda Murray, and pro-vided a seamless look in this bathroom.
At dusk, you can see tonal changes in the living and dining room. Something to note are the lutron dimmers that are programmed to produce different amounts of light that help set the mood in each room with different settings such as morning, relaxation, night lighting, and entertainment scenes set up for any occasion.
Note the floor to ceiling high security glass that blurs the line between indoors and outdoors. The inner two glass panels weigh 300kg (660lbs)each. The left window is a tilt turn window. It’s a type of window found in Europe that can open as a casement window, or tilt back when only ventalation is desired.
Note the floor panels of the shower floor are flush with the rest of the bathroom. Kevin first noticed this on projects in Beverly Hills, and was able to reverse engineer how it was done by visually inspecting these projects. A benefit of this design is that if there is ever a leak in the future, you can simply remove the shower floor panels, inspect the problem, fix the problem, and drop the panels back into place. The concept of shower panels come from how exterior decks are built in Europe. Instead of water flowing off of the tiles, water flows through the gaps in the tiles, pro-viding a convenient way of drainage, and easily accessing serviceable parts of a building that facilitate ease of maintenance.
Our travels frequently take us to different parts of the world to see innovative ideas, and bring them to North Carolina.
The focal point of the master bathroom are the walls of marble that are bookmatched, as well as the hand carved 500kg (1100lb) limestone tub. Again, Kevin got on a plane and headed overseas to hand select the wall marble, wanting a black and white motif with varying strengths of the black veining. There are also innocuous variegated multi-colored veining that is seen only when you look closely, providing small elements of color.
Note that the limestone tub matches the flooring. Kevin purchased blocks of limestone that became the floors and the limestone tub
On the ground level (basement), there is a wellness space that features a cold plunge pool, dry sauna, and exercise equipment.
Stradella features a subterranean 10 car garage for collector cars.
The exterior of Stradella features a rectilinear pool with a tanning shelves, and a hot tub. A minor detail that is innocuous, but innovative, is the pool coping. In a typical pool, the tile that is installed along the perimeter is different that the decking. That’s because the decking manufacturer doesn’t make pool coping, and the pool coping manufacturer doesn’t make decking. Kevin had the pool decking fabricated into pool coping so that it was all the same, and blended together. Note that the limestone inside the residence is the same limestone used for outdoor decking, providing a seamless transition from indoor to outdoor living space.
The closets in the Stradella residence are Italian. Kevin travels around Europe and happened to stop by a factory on the outskirts of Milan. In Eu-rope, closets are highly customizable, and this factory was no different. Kevin was able to specify wood veneers to match the interior doors and kitchen cabinetry so that there was a consistent flow
This proposed residence was inspired by a project in Marbella, Spain. The monolithic structure is meant for privacy, concealing the expansive glass in the back of the residence. In the middle of the front of the house, an innocuous 6’ wide opening quietly provides an entrance to an inner court yard with expansive glass. See the next image.
Once you enter through the innocuous opening, an inner courtyard reveals 2 stories of glass and an expansive foyer. Limestone flooring from Spain is specified for this proposed residence
The rear of the residence is designed and centered around the pool. Two bedrooms on the first floor, and two bedrooms on the second floor have direct views of the pool.
