The Life House commandsrespect. Visitors must remove theirshoes and socks on the threshold,and go barefoot: this way, they won’tspoil the cool white polished terrazzofloors. It means that arriving inthis creation by the architecturaldesigner John Pawson on a wildWelsh hilltop is much like entering aplace of worship, except that therituals and beliefs revolve aroundspace and light.It is to Pawson that we owe the

trend for shop interiors resemblingart galleries, with dresses, handbagsand underwear displayed involuminous space like so manyPicassos. Perhaps this is to beexpected from a man who cut histeeth on galleries before going off todesign Calvin Klein’s first flagshipstore in Manhattan, at which pointhis career went stratospheric.He has also given us “thinking

kitchens” with brushed steel andself-shutting drawers; restaurantswhere starched tablecloths andpuffy chairs have been elbowedaside by industrial chic; everythingfrom monasteries to knives andforks. When his new £83m DesignMuseum, created inside the grade II*listed former CommonwealthInstitute, in Kensington, westLondon, opens in November, hishallmark lavish discipline willcreate another sensation.

He designed the LifeHouse on this hill in Powys,

near the Shropshire border, at theinvitation of the philosopher Alainde Botton, on behalf of LivingArchitecture, the not-for-profitoutfit set up to encourage us all tolove modern architecture a little bitmore. Its buildings are available forshort-term lets, offering a sort ofhigh-end architectural joy ride.Yet joy isn’t high on Pawson’s list.

He is more of a thinker. He hasthought so hard about every detail,every tented ceiling and uplit handbasin, that he effectively remotelycontrols the behaviour of whoeverlays their head down here.At first glance, the Life House

offers little hint of what is to come.It’s almost unnoticeable in thelandscape, crouching low on the hill,with the deportment and shape of abarn. How deceptive appearancescan be. “The ambition was to createa space, monastic in quality, todistract people from their normalconcerns, help visitors rethink,reflect, pause,” de Botton says.“People have always said of

Pawson that even if he is designingan underwear shop, it has a hintof a church about it. But here weasked him to go to extremes andwork to a low budget. He has somefancy clients, so he graciouslycomplained about that. But in theend he has a produced a house that isnoble, reveals itself slowly and, yes,is very bossy.”Shoes off, then, toes to terrazzo,

doors to manual. It feels like aspaceship. The exterior is cloaked

Designed by the minimalist’s minimalist, John Pawson, this sleek holiday home in Wales is full of surprises. E

Llandrindod Wells

LlanbisterA483A44

10miles

Pen-y-Bont

ShropshireHills AONB

Life House

Aberystwyth

Chamberof secrets

in charcoal-black brick; the interioris hollowed out like the inside of ameringue, lined with layers of thinwhite Danish brick. The voluminousglass hallway leads to a long L-shapedcorridor with the living room andbedrooms off it. The corridor is nota friendly place — no corridor is —so it must be here for a reason.This one gets darker and darker

until there is almost no light at all.Ahead, two heavy wooden doorsopen into a black chamber. The onlythings inside it are two glazed blackstone beds and a light shaft high inthe roof. It feels like a tomb andmakes the blood chill. Etched on agravestone on the floor is one ofPascal’s Pensées: “All men’s miseriesderive from not being able to sit ina quiet room alone.” The house isalready behaving like a dark fairytale, taking us on an adventurewith transforming possibilities.A glass of wine is required to calm

the nerves. The bottle is chilled inone of the two fridges, but the houseitself is stifling, as the black bricksabsorb the heat on a hot day. Amongthe massed ranks of self-closingcupboards, all exactly the same,where might the corkscrew be? It islike playing pelmanismwith a setof beautifully made blank cards.Just before madness sets in, the

corkscrew is found lurking in ahidden compartment above thewaste-bin drawer, which itself hasfour sections, each for a differenttype of rubbish. Phew.The kitchen is an important part

of the Pawson experience. He is theman who designed a highly admired

Even the kitchen cupboards keep you guessing, finds Caroline McGhie

minimalist kitchen for the Belgiancompany Obumex, a study ingeometry where the only roundshape is in the tap. The firmdescribes him as “a living legend”.Pawson, who was educated at

Eton and spent many years in Japan,states that his aim is to subdue chaos,not to allow a single machine tobecome an object of interest. There isno worship of the coffee maker here.What annoys him most is that

people talk about the “simplicity”of his work. “People think it’s justa matter of ‘Paint it white, put in ashadow gap and not too muchstuff’,” he says. “They think it isrestrained, but being obsessed isthe opposite of restrained.” DeyanSudjic, director of the DesignMuseum, describes him as the guruof “the art of nothing”. He luxuriatesin the materials he uses, here thepinkish wood of Douglas fir on theceilings, and a millefeuille of brick.Unaware that his desire for calm

can cause near-nervous breakdownsamong would-be cooks anddrinkers, Pawson says he wants thekitchen to be a place where “all themoves feel instinctive —you don’twant to take the duration of yourstay to learn the choreography”.The house insists on tidiness.“Everything has a place, and allthose places are behind doors orinside drawers, because I prefer itthis way.” So you clean up your actand like it or lump it.The kitchen runs seamlessly into

a dining area with a beautiful roundmarble-topped dining table, alsodesigned by Pawson. At the far end,it transmutes into a living area witha large corner sofa the colour ofelephant hide and a homey, glazed,cream-tiled Scandinavian-stylewoodburner.Inside the Life House, all is

monochrome. Outside, gossipingsheep roam and cow parsley riotson the green hills. The interiorpalette of black and white reflectsthe blackened gorse and rough moorgrass, according to Pawson, whomust have designed it in winter.

One wonders if the locals mindedabout such a house landing here.“There were fears, and we did talk alot to local people and to planners,”de Botton says. “We try to find landwhere an old postwar bungalowmight have become a bit of aneyesore, and we are interested inbleak and deserted landscapes.”This spot near Llandrindod Wellsoffered both. It opened this year,following last year’s addition to thecollection, Grayson Perry’s Housefor Essex, which is wildly colourfuland jolly — it could hardly be moredifferent. “But it is still exploringthe idea of narrative architecture,”de Botton says.In the narrative of the Life House,

the bedrooms are three gold casketsfrom which you must choose. Thefirst, dedicated to music, has astate-of-the-art sound system anda collection of CDs from the Beatlesto Bach’s cello suites. The secondis about bathing, and has a hugedouble-ended tub mounted in analtar of polished white travertine,which is in turn wrapped in windowswith butterflies flitting against theglass. The third is given over toliterature. Volumes of Aristotle,Freud, Woolf, Larkin, Tolstoy,Winnicott and de Botton himself arenot crushed like prisoners intobookcases; rather, each stands on itsown shelf, accorded the weight andsignificance of a Ming vase.This is a house of light and dark,

its tail rammed into the earth wherethe dark chamber lies, its spine thecorridor that journeys towards thelight. Beyond the glass entrance, itbursts out onto the hill and lands thevisitor in the blazing sun, where twomore stone beds stand either side ofan engraved tablet, the mirror imageof its subterranean counterpart. Thisone bears Henry David Thoreau’swords about choosing to live in thewild, “to see if I could not learn whatit had to teach and not, when I cameto die, discover that I had not lived”.So, are the dark and light chambers

for contemplation effectively tomband womb, or vice versa? Are webeing taken through an architecturalmetaphor for the journey of life,passing through private personalspace and through the hall forfeasting from a dark space towardsthe blinding light? “There is nosingle answer to your question,”Pawson says. “I work slowly,developing each room and refiningthe sequence of spaces, thinkingalways in terms of atmosphere andlight. It is called Life House becauseI wanted to make a place that madeeveryday rituals feel special.” Now,where did he put those spoons?

� The Life House sleeps six and isavailable to rent through LivingArchitecture for £1,600-£3,000 aweek, with a one-week minimumstay; living-architecture.co.uk

”People think it isrestrained, but beingobsessed is the oppositeof being restrained”

Gilbert McCarragher

28 .08 . 2016

GET THE LOOK� The cream-tiled woodburneris by Dick van Hoff.£7,995; bigfire.co.uk

�Bespoke rug from the RugCompany. £775 a sq metre;therugcompany.com

� The sofa, dining table andcoffee table are Pawson designs.benchmarkfurniture.com

� The tableware is from hiscollection at When Objects Work.www.whenobjectswork.com

� John Pawson Signature kitchen.From €80,000, includinginstallation; obumex.be/en/kitchens

SUNDAY TIMES DIGITALSee the rugged Welsh location ofthe Life House and take a videotour, in our tablet edition or at

thesundaytimes.co.uk

The supply of the material by The Publisher does not constitute or imply any endorsement or sponsorship of any product, service , company or organisation. Material may not be edited, altered, photocopied, electronically scanned or otherwise dealt in without the written permission of The Publisher. Times News Paper, News UK & Ireland Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF email: enquiries@newssyndication.com. Reprinted with permission by The Reprint and Licensing Centre tel: 0207 501 1085.

HOM

E