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Welcome to our gallery featuring the Dolomites house, a custom design by JM Architecture situated in the Dolomite Mountain borderland between Italy and Austria.

The idea of remodelling this house was borne from an uncomfortable living situation. The existing building presented a very large and tall entry hall with the rooms surrounding, necessitating a walk through it to move around the house. On the ground floor, the kitchen, dining room, living room, and the stube were not proportioned to the size of the house and couldn’t get enough light.

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For this reason the entire ground floor has been demolished, and a new interior clear glass envelope with a drywall insert is now the only separation among the different spaces. Few new volumes have been added around the house to extend the entry hall and the oversized family room, which include dining, relaxing, and study areas.

To allow the maximum amount of light into the rooms, the façades have been replaced by a custom designed structural silicon curtain wall, with base and head mullions flush with the floor and ceiling, and large pop-out sliding doors to create interaction between indoor and outdoor. Because of very low temperatures in winter, the heating solution is a combination of radiant floor heating, perimeter floor radiators along the curtain wall, a gas see-through-the-outside fireplace, and a standard wood fireplace.

The house is controlled by a fully automated iBus system, with particular attention given to the audio video equipment, which includes invisible speakers embedded in the walls and ceilings of different areas. Almost everything has been custom designed, from the entire kitchen to the tables, desks, gas and wood fireplaces. Since maple wood isn’t stable with radiant floor heating, the floor planks were custom built with 2.5mm Canadian maple top and back layers on a particleboard. The 20cm width of the floor planks modulates the position of all the elements, from the walls to the millwork.

A 2.5m tall wooden wall with horizontal slats, emphasizing the perspective and casting shadows, encloses the garden. A wood deck made of 14cm wide Ipe wood planks surrounds the house, runs up a sunbathing platform with a Jacuzzi inserted, and covers two long desks.

The sun shading system runs on tracks inserted in steel beams, visually extending the interior ground floor ceiling. A steel framed wood canopy on one side allows one to relax outdoors on a rainy day.