2023-08-06 13:42:17
Basketball courts in the basement, kilometer-long bedrooms, four-meter beds and red rooms in the “Fifty Shades of Grey” style, these are the extras that the most eccentric millionaires request for their mansions, the founding partners of GC Studio explain to EFE, Lucía Cassaus and Alexis Gonzalez, experts in luxury residential projects.
Currently, in the design standards of a high-end home “three basic points prevail”: location, which leads you to pay more money for fewer meters if it is in the ideal place; the space, where it is important that “the house breathes on its own”, and of course, the views and the finishes, in which noble materials are used.
In addition, in enclaves as exclusive as those found in the south of Spain, in Marbella and the Costa del Sol, outdoor areas are essential since, thanks to the climate, life is spent outside all year round, Lucía and Alexis point out.
In GC they observe that the client has changed -today they are much younger, they say- and the list of their essentials also includes a small indoor pool, a good wine bar, a water and spa area, a hairdressing and beauty salon, a massages, cinema, gym and even a golf simulator, they detail. In general terms, Westerners look for similar things because they have “the same lifestyle” and, although “there are always small details that vary”, it is when jumping from continent to continent when “projects change substantially” since the needs and the likes.
Arab and Russian eccentrics
Broadly speaking, Europeans and Americans, although they may have their eccentricities, are not ¿as extreme¿ as those of the Arabs who, for example, request several kitchens and that they be closed, or the Russians, who show “a more singular pattern “, they emphasize.
Among the most peculiar requests are those of a client who requested a four-meter bed because “he likes to sleep with a lot of people” or another who asked to incorporate “a hidden room, a red room” into the house.
It is a room that would be hidden behind a “kind of furniture” that opens with a complex mechanism and that has the security measures of a bunker but intended for a specific type of sexual practices, popularized through the Fifty Shades trilogy. de Grey, the work of English writer Erika Leonard Mitchell, better known as EL James.
For GC Studio, as design and architecture professionals, making these kinds of demands come true is “interesting and fun” because “you get out of the normal patterns a bit… and that’s something that entertains them and their entire team” they comment between laughs. Although they are delicate issues -they underline- because they have to collect sensitive and very personal information about the tastes and interests of the person who commissions the design. Among the projects they are working on, there are some that are “unique” because of the dimensions they have in themselves, they highlight.
bigger better
Nowadays, “having space is a luxury” and any mansion must have spacious and large rooms, they point out, because “you don’t have to fill everything with furniture.” It is about “arriving and finding light and windows”. In high-end buildings, one avoids ¿ridiculous or too small spaces¿, and it is expected that ¿everything has a good proportion and that there is no furniture attached to a wall¿ that makes it necessary to “walk through the house between corridors” .
On a 50,000 square meter plot, in Belgium they have designed a 6,000 square meter mansion with two huge basements and the client has asked them to incorporate, among other things, a futsal field, a tennis court, a basketball and a bowling alley. In Spain, where there is a sunny climate with little rain, placing sports facilities underground and not outside is rare, but in other enclaves in central and northern Europe where “the temperature and weather are different and it doesn’t allow you to practice this type of sports in the open air throughout the year”, it is not so, they specify.
In fact, there are luxury properties that do not even have an outdoor pool, they report, and this is replaced by a pool, even 25 meters long, and a spa area that is closed with glass panels that allow partial openings at certain times of the year. to enjoy the good weather, when there is one, they clarify.
No budget limit
As for the budget, the reality is that “this type of project does not begin with budgets… because -he clarifies- these types of clients do not come saying I have x and I want to spend x minus two”. Whoever demands a project of these characteristics “arrives asking for what he wants with the qualities and materials he wants, but is there no ‘budget’ limit (budget in English)?”
Although it is true that “everyone has capacities and numbers in their head”, they comment, “when they have that list of requirements, the budget is not important to them”·. The sustainable aspect of a home is also something that is becoming more and more important, both for those who design and for those who commission it, and from GC Studio they are committed to incorporating, for example, gray or rainwater recycling systems.
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