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“We were aware of the history of the place; our expectations were accordingly high,” Pöppler says. “When we arrived, we were simultaneously impressed and shocked at once.” The villa had caught fire during World War II and was rebuilt in the 1980s with materials that did little justice to its origins: polystyrene moulding from a hardware store, gold recessed spotlights, a staircase with a landing that didn’t align properly with the floor above it. A white Carrara marble fireplace remained, but little else, in Pöppler’s estimation, was worth keeping. 

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The facade itself, protected as a listed structure, was left untouched. The clients had initially approached Pöppler for help with colour and furnishings. The scope grew once he was direct with them about the interior’s condition, and once it became apparent that the heating, electrical systems and windows all required replacement regardless. “Fortunately, our customers understood immediately,” he says.

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The clients are an entrepreneurial family with regional roots, and the house serves a dual function, private residence and site for business gatherings, from large receptions to small conferences. That brief shaped the floor plan as much as any aesthetic consideration. Three smaller rooms on the ground floor were combined into a single garden hall to accommodate groups.

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Because the south-facing rooms remained darker than expected, Pöppler’s team angled the window reveals to draw in more light, a detail that isn’t immediately visible but required considerable work. An oval oculus between the conservatory and the living hall was reopened, and a skylight was added in the extension, framing views up into the tree canopy.

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In the entrance hall, doorways and passages were raised by nearly a metre and finished with round arches, opening sightlines toward the living room, the lounge and the garden beyond. The staircase to the upper floor, the family’s private quarters, was reworked into an enclosed, linoleum-lined tunnel in pink, replacing what Pöppler described as a fairly ordinary open staircase. “The upper floor is a retreat for the family,” he says. “So we provided privacy through the tunnel.”

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At the centre of the 969 sq ft living room stands a dining table of Pöppler’s own design, called Belenus, in oak, extendable with two additional leaves to seat up to eighteen. The floor throughout is terrazzo with purple accents, developed with a specialist in Berlin and chosen for its durability, since the garden and interior are meant to be used together. In the garden room, the ceiling is finished in wooden planks pressed using a high-pressure process borrowed from yacht building, left slightly wavy rather than flattened smooth. A mustard yellow painted wooden panel runs along the base of the ground-floor walls, both to break up the scale of the hall and to withstand the attentions of the family’s two dogs.

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Colour carries much of the house’s character. A three-toned portal, light blue from the living room, red from the drawing room, and yellow from the skirting, meets at the passage between the living hall and the salon. Pöppler recalled that the painter overseeing the work called the client before the first brushstroke, unsettled by the combination. Her response, as he remembers it: “Trust Mr Pöppler, it will be good.”

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Craftsmanship extended to a wide network of specialists: a carpenter in Würzburg, upholsterers in Paris, a brass foundry in Belgium, hand-spun cashmere blankets woven in Nepal, a marble washbasin milled in Greece. The garden was designed by Manuel Wehrle of the Royal Garden Academy and includes a natural swimming pool filtered by plants, a vegetable garden tended in part by two runner ducks, and beehives kept by a local beekeeper. 

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When the renovation was finished, the family invited everyone who had worked on the house to celebrate together, from the roofer to the cleaning company. “I am impressed by the special attitude that our clients bring with them,” Pöppler says. “They are curious, never stand still, open and interested in all directions.”

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