‘My father was the house and the house was my father’

Shelley Klein grew up in a “see-through” house in the Scottish Borders, designed by leading modernist architect Peter Womersley. Her father was influential designer Bernat Klein, and their home regularly hosted catwalk shows for fashion editors flown up f

For as long as I can remember, it has been understood within our family that High Sunderland is not simply a house. One close friend, Jenny, described it as “a Mondrian set within a Klimt” because with its series of colourful glass panels set against a backdrop of birch and fir trees, it is like living within a work of art. Not only that, but the house, which was built in the modernist vernacular, dictates how one should live, what one should pay attention to and what one should ignore. It is a deceptively simple structure yet ultimately a highly complex amalgamation of ideas and ideals, a timepiece and a time machine as well as a combination of two men’s ambitions: that of the architect – Peter

Womersley – whose first proper commission this was, and a young Yugoslavian émigré to Britain – my father – who commissioned the project. Over the next fifty-six years Beri was to become so attached to High Sunderland it was almost impossible

– to my mind, at least – to separate the two things out from each other.

My father was the house. The house was my father. Built in the late Fifties, High Sunderland makes no apologies for looking towards the future rather than gazing nostalgically towards the past. As you approach it from the driveway through a thick forest of pine trees, it