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"People in glass houses shouldn&amp;#039;t throw stones, the saying goes. But in the case of Ricardo Cottin&amp;#039;s home in Caracas, there is no reason to hold back. The one-story Japanese-inspired structure has had its original rice-paper screens replaced with bulletproof glass. This contemporary intervention integrates the precisely tailored architecture with the tropical landscape while holding at bay the less-friendly aspects of life in Venezuela, namely a sky-high crime rate. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like living in a bubble,&amp;quot; the owner admits. &amp;quot;But grilles on the windows would have gone against the feeling of the house.&amp;quot; Cottin and his wife, Andreina, acknowledge that a transparent residence isn&amp;#039;t the obvious choice in a city whose affluent population barricades itself behind electrified fences. But the energetic couple has never lacked for daring. A prominent lawyer, Ricardo is an off-road motorcycle racer and former triathlete; when she isn&amp;#039;t chasing after three children ranging in age from toddler to teen, Andreina often participates in 5K runs. To accommodate that active lifestyle and their growing family, the Cottins craved a dwelling set amid a lush landscape and offering easy access to the outdoors.   Months of hunting turned up mostly gated Spanish Colonials, but eventually the couple learned that an unusual modern villa had come on the market in the Caracas Country Club neighborhood. As Ricardo explains, &amp;quot;It needed heavy restoration, but within five minutes, we made an offer.&amp;quot; The Cottins knew that however much work was involved, they would be gaining a gem. Around 1960, after entrepreneur Guillermo Chapell\u00EDn Sahmkow and his wife returned from an inspiring trip to Japan, they asked architect Julio C\u00E9sar Volante to build them a sukiya-style house, with simple lines, rice-paper walls, and raked-gravel gardens. What they got was a romantic retreat with modernist flair. Elevated two feet off the ground, its concrete floors are suspended on an external steel structure that also supports the ceilings; the entire building seems to levitate. When the house became theirs, the Cottins hired Tot\u00F3n S\u00E1nchez\u2014an architecture star whose hotel and restaurant interiors attract the capital&amp;#039;s fashionable set\u2014to oversee its renovation. The rotting hardwood ceilings and floors were replaced with new dark-honey lumber finished to a satin glow, and in came a state-of-the-art kitchen and sleek natural-oak bathrooms. &amp;quot;The goal was to respect the basic and defining aspects of the house&amp;#039;s original design but at the same time to modernize it and open up the spaces,&amp;quot; Ricardo says. For his part, S\u00E1nchez admired how the rooms are connected by a series of external wooden bridges, allowing them to flow seamlessly from indoors to outdoors. But the rice-paper screens, he noticed, blocked the views of the fern-frothed gardens and El \u00C1vila Mountain in the distance. So the architect, under the influence of Mies van der Rohe and determined to make the landscape a constant presence inside, replaced the white screens with clear glass. The streamlined house now seems even more fluid. Another Miesian touch by S\u00E1nchez is a hefty divider of Colombian marble\u2014an echo of the freestanding onyx wall in the German master&amp;#039;s 1929 Barcelona Pavilion\u2014that cuts the enormous living room down to more manageable size. The vertical slab separates the 1,370-square-foot space into two smaller areas, one of which is now a library and music room. More subtle and less trend-driven than his commercial work, S\u00E1nchez&amp;#039;s residential interiors still have a serious sense of style. &amp;quot;I started out in fashion and I try to bring that feeling to my work,&amp;quot; says the architect, once a business partner of the Venezuela-born fashion designer Angel Sanchez. The Cottins&amp;#039; living room is outfitted with sexy Italian sectionals and a scattering of walnut Eames stools. An orange rug by Mira Lehr for Odegard and turquoise pillows add pizzazz. These calculated flashes of color enliven the palette of neutrals used throughout the wood-and-stone house. But in the family room, S\u00E1nchez took a much more dramatic tack: blood-red walls and a quilted sofa in burnt orange.  Bulletproof glass and security guards may be helpful in today&amp;#039;s Venezuela, but as the Cottins explain, some intruders are more welcome than others. One afternoon a wild parrot crashed into the living room window and became disoriented. The children rushed to its aid and set it free the next morning. &amp;quot;A day later the parrot came back, and it lived in the kitchen for months,&amp;quot; Andreina recalls. Its squawks were a sweet reminder that she and her husband created a home that is a haven from the outside world\u2014but not isolated from it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/a3801/perfectly-clear-a-47531/>