design et al are delighted to announce that Anna Bilton Ltd. have been shortlisted for Beach House Award within The International Design and Architecture Awards 2017.
A luxury yet comfortable beachfront family home, independent guest house and pool house for a large family was designed by Anna Bilton Ltd. The design for the interior sought inspiration and sourced products from all over the world which served to compliment the eclectic, vibrant collection of artworks. Bringing all of this together over a neutral canvas allows the house to breathe and offers the clients a sense of calm and respite from the relentless heat of the sun.
The brief was to design and create a luxurious and yet practical 15,000 sq.ft beachfront family home and guesthouse in the Bahamas. Catering for children from the age of two to seventeen, as well as creating large entertaining spaces for extended family and friends. Vibrant colours and nautical accents as well as an eclectic art collection were to be incorporated within a neutral background scheme. Whilst the client’s art is vibrant and allowed for strong accents of colour to be used throughout, the house itself needed to offer the clients a place that felt cool and offered relaxation. A sense of open space juxtaposed with cosy family areas were to be created. A light and spacious home full of vibrant colour and life, both in a sense of how it was occupied and with the objects it was to be filled with.
The family requested Anna Bilton to design a large central living and entertaining space with a 360-degree gallery around it providing satellite bedrooms for all of the five children, allowing the parents to entertain whilst maintaining a sense of family above. This impressive room was to open out to a large interior/exterior room for further family living and entertaining, in turn this space was to open out to the swimming pool and vast expanse of white beach beyond. A large fully equipped and practical guest house was also to be designed, separated from the main house by a narrow walkway that could be used for extended family.
The designer’s favourite aspect of the 5 Oceans project was said to be the triple height reception room, allowing an abundance of light to enter the space, creating a vista right from the front door through the house and out to the ocean. The transition from the interior to exterior space is completely seamless. The design works well to create the family holiday environment. Nestled in amongst indigenous vegetation along the beach, it sits gently back from the crystal turquoise ocean and is approached by a narrow sandy walkway and bleached wood steps. Though designed to fit neatly in to the landscape the entire house was made with pre-fabricated specialist concrete slabs in the USA ready to assemble seamlessly together to create this unprecedented space. Local stone specialists were used to install huge slabs of imported marble whilst others completed the much more time-consuming task of lining the exterior shower with local beach found pebbles.
