Four is done; one is planned. I wrote the design criteria, those additional conditions that stated what kind of buildings are allowed and then I also took the obligation to look through all the sketches and coordinate the projects. This was the wish of the owners, who bought it and then started selling it. They wanted to harmonize the appearance of the area, to put something in place. I think to some extent they succeeded to do it.

 

I think this is a good example of it [environment planning]; all those other districts are full of all sorts of things. But we kept the colours and shape. I did think of having a two-sentence guideline, it was a hard nut to crack to decide how to do it. Those two sentences were: all corners of the house have to be rectangular both in the plan and in views, even those round windows, arches, and other tricks have to be boxes. And the other sentence: the ground-floor floor cannot be higher than 30 cm [11.8 in] from the ground surface, so that all those high staircases, plinths and all that other nonsense disappears automatically. There were other things as well, e.g. the height of the fence, the shape of the garden, and how much other materials besides the main material could be used, so that it would be coherent. This way there was some sort of an order.

 

If I had said all the buildings should be egg-shaped, what would have happened? I tried to keep it fairly precise with those materials, as someone will always make a mistake. Then there are those who do not want to follow the rules and I cannot attack or punish them, but at least this way the guidelines are there holding it together. Of course, around it there will be peculiarities making it interesting and diverse. Its surrounding is different; trees and nature and cars and people and things and everything else. If you start messing with it straightaway you get a rosolli salad, and you lose its structure, it is important to keep this straight line as long as possible.

 

It was good that they used a different architect for each house, this way eliminating the possibility of routine or it becoming dull. If they had one architect and he had done the whole area it would have ended badly; this way there are a lot of idiosyncrasies. As every plot had its own owner and there was not one developer who built it all, it allowed controlling a little bit this anarchy that is usually happening on our building lots.