Project story · Amman, Jordan
Terraces that follow the hill
Above Amman, Private Home climbs a hillside in stepped limestone terraces, with olive planting and a private entrance court.
By byJOOM · Private Home · Residential
Following the slope
The house follows the slope in terraces. Instead of cutting a flat platform out of the hill and putting a box on it, the design lets each part of the house find its own level. A family home that makes the most of the hill, it gives each part of the day its own terrace.
Limestone and olive
Limestone walls and olive planting root the house in the hillside. Local limestone terraces follow the hill, and the planting does what planting does on a slope: it holds the earth and softens the edge between wall and ground. In the pictures the stone is the colour of the hill, so the house looks less like an object placed on the landscape than like another layer of it.
A private entrance court
The entrance is a court, entered through gates. Black gates and low walls give privacy without turning the back of the house to the view. It is a calm, enclosed arrival, stone underfoot, with the valley just visible beyond. You are protected first and shown the view afterwards.
Views down the valley
The reason to build on a hillside is the view, and the design keeps it. Terraces step toward the valley so that every level has an outlook of its own. At sunset the pictures show the whole slope lit amber, and the house reads as part of a long hillside of stone and planting.
Local stone, planting and a low profile mean it will weather into the hill.
Privacy that does not turn its back
Walls and gates are often a hard edge. Here they are low, stone and planted, and they are arranged so that the house gives privacy without closing off the view. The building is private in the way a hillside house should be: held within its ground, but open to its outlook.
Weathering into the hill
Local stone, planting and a low profile mean Private Home will weather into the hill. That is the design's whole ambition: to become less noticeable the longer it is there.
This article describes design intention. The images are design visualisations, not photographs of a finished building. See the Disclaimers.