Villa on Palm Jumeirah

The ground floor of the villa is one space from the garden windows to the staircase. The brief was to keep it open and still give the kitchen, the dining room and the living room their own character.

The answer stands in the middle: a full-height glass cabinet in a dark metal frame, with a herringbone veneer back and light in every shelf. From the sofa you look through it to the dining table. From the kitchen it reads as a lantern.

The kitchen is matt graphite from floor to ceiling with built-in ovens and a long island that ends in a wooden breakfast table. Two black linear pendants repeat the lines of the trimless light tracks in the ceiling.

In the living room a low modular sofa faces a wall of dark veined marble with a floating timber console below the TV. The floor is large-format pale stone throughout, so the dark elements look deliberate rather than heavy. Sheer curtains run wall to wall and soften the daylight without hiding the garden.