The first thing the house gives away is the light. It falls through large panes, slips past a double-height opening and lands on timber, pale walls and the deep green beyond. The setting does a lot of the work here: trees run close to the windows, and the rooms are arranged so the view never feels incidental. In this modern villa with forest views, the landscape is part of the plan, not just the backdrop.

Large windows that pull the trees inside

The living area is organised around openness, but not in a generic sense. A double-height window beside the seating area frames the wooded edge in full vertical layers, from floor to canopy. The void above it keeps the space connected, while the height of the opening draws daylight deeper into the room. On the upper level, two home offices by the void look out toward the forest and the pool, so the same sightline keeps returning at different levels of the house.

That repetition matters. It turns a simple view into a daily route through the interior. From the sofa, from the landing, from a desk at the edge of the void, the eye meets trees, glass and water in a single line. The villa’s calm comes from those measured frames, not from decoration. Even the evening images show how the lighting picks out the edges of the volumes while the glazing keeps the interior visibly linked to the garden.

Open plan living around one long island

On the ground floor, open plan living is shaped by a seven-metre kitchen island and a generous dining table placed in clear view of each other. The island gives the room its length. It anchors the circulation, sets the scale of the kitchen, and leaves enough space for movement around it without breaking the room into smaller pieces. The dining zone sits close by, so cooking, dining and conversation stay in one continuous field.

A dark oak wall gathers the more practical elements into one line. The lift door, stairs, cloakroom, kitchen wall, storage room and garage are absorbed into that surface or tucked directly behind it. Instead of spreading storage across the floor plan, the wall gives the lower level a clean edge. It also lets the multimedia room work differently: when needed, a large sliding wall closes it off, and when open it joins the rest of the living space without extra visual noise.

A wall that hides what the room does not need to show

From the right angle, the oak surface reads as a long, dark band against lighter plaster. It does more than conceal circulation and storage. It clears the main living zone so the eye can move from the kitchen to the dining table, then outward to the glass. The result is not a showpiece wall but a practical one, using material and depth to organise an open plan interior with very little fuss.

Rooms that keep the forest in sight

Wood is used with restraint, but it is never weak. The warm material palette appears in the wall finishes, the joinery and the vertical slats visible in the images, where they filter light and soften the transition between solid and transparent parts of the house. White ceilings and pale floor surfaces keep the interior bright, while darker built-in volumes mark thresholds and corners. The contrast is clear enough to read at once, yet quiet enough to let the view remain dominant.

The upper level uses the void as more than a visual device. It becomes a place where daily work can happen without losing contact with the wider space below. Those home office positions by the void look down into the living area and outward to the trees, so the workday stays tied to the same atmosphere as the rest of the house. The openness is controlled, not exposed; there is room to see, but also room to pause.

Below ground, the house opens up again

The basement changes the pace without abandoning light. Around a central fixed core, the lower level is organised as a box-in-box composition that gathers the fitness room, relaxation area, billiards room and a separate craft and drawing studio. The functions are adjacent, but not flattened into one large room. Each space has its own edge, and the sequence allows the level to shift from movement to stillness, from play to focus, without long corridors or dead corners.

Here, the most striking move is the glass wall between the steam showers and the sauna. It adds depth to the wellness area and lets the different parts of the room remain visible to each other. A void above brings sunlight down into the living basement, so the lower floor avoids the usual closed feeling associated with basements. The daylight is not decorative; it changes the way the rooms are read and used.

Materials that carry the mood

The project uses a small set of materials and lets them do the work. Timber appears in the dark oak wall, in vertical slats and in the joinery. Large areas of glass open the house to the forest and the pool. Pale surfaces keep the rooms from closing in, while the darker inserts sharpen the plan. In the spa bathroom, glass, tile and timber create a clear sequence of hard, reflective and tactile surfaces, with the shower enclosure reading almost like a light box inside the room.

That same logic runs through the wellness spaces: the pool outside, the relaxation areas below, the work areas above. The villa is energy-efficient in intent, but the more visible idea is careful restraint in how it presents itself. Nothing is overdrawn. The rooms are large where they need to be, enclosed where they should be, and always tied back to the trees outside. For a luxury home, that discipline is what gives the plan its character.

Photography by Robin Van den Acker and Yannick Milpas.