While the effort expended on this project was surely outstanding, and the goal was admirable, the outcome, in my view, is less so. Take, for example, the downstairs area, where the house opens to the street, and where the family cooks, eats and socializes. One comes into a large, bright, double-height place that has a stove, fridge, an enormous Caesarstone island and cupboards in it, but it isn’t a kitchen. In the same place is a lovely custom-built dining table with a sculpted cast-iron base, but where it stands is no dining room, or even a modernistically ambiguous 'dining area.' The owner said she wanted the house to be open-plan, but this space appears to have no plan of any kind, no articulation of function.Peter A. Sellar