Outside Moscow, in a wooded residential enclave, sits a glued laminated timber house that its owners never wanted to look like one. The brief handed to interior designer Irina Shevchenko was almost contrarian: erase every trace of dacha, chalet, log cabin or sauna, and replace it with something rigorous, intellectual, unmistakably modern.
The clients, a film production designer and a producer, are professionally fluent in image making, and it shows. “Working with timber requires particular discipline,” Shevchenko says. “As a material, wood is inherently expressive and can easily dominate an interior.” Her answer was to open walls and floors into broad white planes, enlarge every window and door, and offset the timber’s warmth with ceramic, brass and sheet metal. A sculptural staircase, slender and almost weightless, threads up to a Constructivist mezzanine library. “The proportions and natural light of the living room evoke the architecture of Alvar Aalto,” she notes, “particularly his celebrated library in Vyborg.”
Downstairs, the social spine of the house pairs Faye Toogood‘s Roly Poly armchair for Driade with Mario Bellini’s Camaleonda sofa for B&B Italia, pendant lights salvaged from a Moscow State University dormitory, and 1935 Aalto bar stools still produced by Artek. “Low profile furniture emphasizes the room’s impressive height,” Shevchenko explains, “while a circular floor plan gently guides movement toward two exits leading to the terrace,” where an antique St. Petersburg ceramic stove, converted into a fireplace, anchors a dining table by Archpole set on glass block supports.
A monumental mosaic fragment rescued from Ivanovo’s textile factory greets visitors in the entrance hall, beside a Murano glass wall light by Leucos, designed by Guidry Toso.
In the primary bedroom, a floor to ceiling ceramic headboard by Lineceramic “introduces a distinctly modernist graphic element,” Shevchenko says, while the owner’s study pairs a vintage Ico Parisi rosewood chair with a Frederik A. Kaiser sideboard and the homeowner’s own artwork. Beds throughout are by Loffilab, textiles by Atelier Tati, a pendant in the elder daughter’s room by Flos, and the terrace’s outdoor lounge chair, by Japanese designer Kensaku Oshiro, migrates in for summer.
Midway through the two year build, the house gained a 23 square metre extension: a cedar sauna, a bathtub by Astra Form, and an “Eclipse” lighting installation by Belarusian designer Yuri Alekhno suspended above it, transforming routine into ritual.
“Vintage objects bring meaning, quiet luxury and a sense of grounding,” Shevchenko says, and the clients clearly agreed, hunting alongside her for mosaic fragments and mustard toned Cielo sanitaryware. The result holds Bauhaus discipline, Soviet modernist geometry and Nordic warmth together, not as a mood board but as a home built entirely in its owners’ own visual language.
