There are holiday lets that purely serve a purpose and then there are holiday lets that transport you into a parallel dream world and become the unforgettable highlight of your stay.
Tanizaki’s Shadows falls into the latter category of properties that deliver an elusive wow factor in pure zen style, pun intended. Although the last thing anyone would expect when stepping inside an apartment in Gozo is to land in a Japanese ‘courtyard’.
This was very much an ugly-duckling-to-elegant-swan transformation that initially left seasoned architect Chris Briffa stumped for inspiration. “I was at a loss what to do with it,” he confesses. He tried very hard to be diplomatic with the adjectives describing what the property looked like in its original state, stopping at a kind “not very inventive”.
At 40m in length, almost the size of an Olympic swimming pool, the apartment in Għajnsielem, perched on a cliff overlooking Mġarr Harbour, was practically divided into two, with a very dark middle and bright light streaming in at either end, the living room facing the east and the bedrooms facing the west. With curved walls, two courtyards along its length and a very long corridor, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom property was “your typical Maltese apartment”.
The light streaming in from the ends proved inspirational. “The first time I visited the apartment it was winter, and the early morning sun hit the living room area with really deep shadows. The sun filtered in through the building and that was quite inspiring,” explains Briffa.
The solution was found within the pages of In Praise of Shadows, a 1933 essay by Japanese author Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, extolling the virtues of Japanese architectural aesthetics. Tanizaki points out that Japanese aesthetics are based on subtle, understated elegance, enhanced by shadows and half-light. Despite never having visited Japan, Briffa took the concepts in Tanizaki’s book almost to the letter and transformed the Gozitan property into a showcase of Japanese-style design, evocative of an authentic ryokan.
It took little to convince the property owner, master carpenter Stephen Azzopardi, to adopt this radical design. “He got quite excited about the idea. We started talking about the traditional construction methods of Japanese houses. It became a research project; something I had never done before,” adds Briffa.
And Stephen and his team at SAW put their skills to full use to manufacture all the doors, joinery, wooden fixtures and furniture of the property.
“Tanizaki’s Shadows had a solid foundation, being the location, the views and the overall atmosphere within the area. However, it was still a blank canvas when we acquired the apartment,” explains Stephen. “We were not after an immediate return on investment; rather we prioritised the overall quality in terms of design and comfort. We wanted something different; something outstanding.”
Being already a very busy company manufacturing bespoke furniture for numerous major commercial and private projects, the team at SAW had to fit Tanizaki’s Shadows in between everything else.
“Implementation of the design and execution of the works were a challenge that took us a couple of years,” he continues, adding that attention to detail and communication within the teams involved were crucial to ensure the designs were developed to the highest standard.
“I am very pleased with the results achieved thanks to the great talent within the design and direction team, proper planning and qualitative resources within the execution of the project.”
As soon as you enter the ground-floor apartment, you immediately step into a haven of serenity, austere, but in a good way, stripped back to clean lines that silence the hustle and bustle of the island outside. A gentle palette of warm timber and oak is complemented by the Gozitan stone and polished concrete, accentuated by that play of light and shadows, creating an ethereal space that floats from indoors to outdoors within the four carefully designed walls.
And the first thing that greets you is the star attraction of the property – the toilet. Bear with me. Briffa admitted he is one of those who judges a hotel or restaurant by the quality of the bathrooms and Tanizaki opens his book with an ode to the Japanese toilet, which he called “a place of spiritual repose.”
Traditionally an outbuilding separate from the rest of the house, the Japanese toilet was made out of wood, a dimly lit place of “reflection” as opposed to Western bathrooms that are brightly lit, sporting clinically white ceramics which not only reflect the idea of hygiene but leave no space for shadows that might mask dirt.
Briffa placed the toilet in the darkest heart of the apartment but surrounded it with a mini Japanese-style garden, complete with a small pond (a trough, really) of koi carp and a clever use of Barrisol material stretched across the ceiling, hiding a range of bright LEDs set at the colour temperature of natural light to give the impression of being outdoors on an overcast day.
“We have had many people coming in here think they had stepped outside,” says Briffa. The toilet cabin is made out of timber and is part suspended over the koi trough, which can be seen through a glass floor in the toilet, turning a functional space into something of an experience.
The seven-metre-wide living area is crowned by a re-interpretation of Briffa’s own Red Blue Shelf, which was originally inspired by Mondrian’s paintings and Gerrit Rietveld’s Red Blue Chair. The ‘shelf’ has now evolved into two modular wooden units on opposite walls that climb up and join in a trellis extending across the ceiling, constructed with practically no glue at all.
Creeper plants in pots along the shelves will eventually grow to cover the trellis, thus reinforcing the outside/in concept and creating a canopy of greenery.
Being so wide, the room was “difficult” to orient so Briffa solved this by placing a modular sofa with four sides in the middle of the room, so you can sit facing either the library, or the TV, or the view across Mġarr harbour, or the kitchen.
The dining area is dominated by a one-ton glass fibre reinforced concrete tabletop set on oak legs. It is framed by specially commissioned artwork by Julien Vinet, a French artist living in Malta. He is married to a Japanese and had lived in Japan for seven years, where he perfected the technique of using traditional Japanese ink in his work.
The cinema-size tryptic Waterfall serves as a backdrop to a highly collectible, rare prototype of Frank Gehry’s Cross Check armchair, which had been gifted to Stephen. On the opposite wall, old upcycled tin pastizzi trays have been transformed into Pjanċi III works of art.
The corridor of shoji doors is reminiscent of a scene from the film Kill Bill and you half expect a geisha to silently appear from behind them. “This is where Stephen showed what a good carpenter he is,” remarks Briffa.
The light filtering through the doorways is another example of Tanizaki’s concepts brought to life. “It is the shadow that tells you what things are; the light that tells you which door to open,” continues Briffa.
It is not surprising that the ingenious use of the space caught the eye of international design judges and earned it a coveted nomination for ArchDaily’s Building of the Year award.
Briffa was the first person to stay in the apartment once it was completed and has returned several times, even with his three young children, who enjoyed running races along that long corridor.
“This apartment was a balancing act, a seesaw, where you are always drawn to the light in the living area in the morning and then to the light in the sleeping area in the afternoon. This play of light is really thanks to its long interior. It was all about taking that seeming handicap of the property – its far-too-long footprint – and flipping it over to make it the first and last real experience of the property.”
