Outside

The house is built in an L shape, its two wings—the living room on one side and the gastro pavilion on the other—embrace a spacious terrace. The pool sits at its centre, and the sea is visible from every corner: from the sunlounger, the table and the fire.

The covered part of the terrace, around sixty square metres under the roof, continues onto the glass walls of the living room: cool at noon, dry when it dews. Meals are eaten outside, on the terrace, or inside, with the glass open, depending on the day; in summer the line between house and terrace disappears anyway. The open part runs around the pool: sunloungers, sun, water within reach.

To the side of the house, in a spot from which you can simultaneously see the playground, the pool and the sea, a fire pit around which ten can sit. When the sun sets, the fire is lit and the terrace becomes a living room under the stars.

Eighty square metres of infinity pool, positioned so the water's edge disappears towards the sea. Heated by its own heat pump, warm in April as in October; at night a thermal cover preserves it until morning. In the water are four massage loungers, with parasols beside them.

The pool faces Umag, therefore towards the sunset. When the sun heads for the sea, the water takes on a copper hue and the pool ceases to be a pool. It becomes a place from which one does not move that evening. And when the underwater lights are switched on and everyone goes to sleep, it remains for two.

A place where the day does not end but only changes light. A separate pavilion with glass walls that open, a large gas grill and underfloor heating. In summer the glass opens and cooking happens on the sea breeze, which here never fails, accompanied by crickets and the first lights in the valley. In winter the glass closes, the floor warms, and the bora outside clears the sky to blue. Dinner lasts just as long.

Beside the pavilion is a herb garden: rosemary, mint, basil, sage, thyme, all within three paces of the grill and the shaker. The pavilion is ventilated and smoking is permitted, summer and winter. Here the table is not cleared until midnight and no one is to blame.

Four thousand square metres, enclosed on all sides. Olive trees in rows, young and old, those that in summer provide a shade a young tree cannot, and grass between them.

Along the paths, lavender, rosemary and oleanders. Lavender at its strongest in June, rosemary at the slightest touch, oleanders until October. In the evening, when the ground releases the day's heat, the scent is strongest.

There is space for balls, for sunloungers in the shade, for a walk for two to the far end of the estate. And for someone to step away for half an hour from the others without anyone noticing.