In the triple-height entrance hall, for example, the staircase to the first level reception rooms has a cantilevered balcony projecting into the hall.
"Clad in golden brick," a text purrs, the house has a sweeping driveway, bow windows, Palladian fanlights, a gleaming pool, a double-height entrance hall, fluted columns and swagged draperies.
At the gaping triple-height entrance, through which the 13,000 employees will file, soaring columns will rise through the triumphal portal in the same brushed-aluminium finish as a Macbook.
It has a double-height entrance leading into a 10,000-square-foot ground-level space; 7,200 square feet on the floor above; and an 8,200-square-foot 8,200-square-foot 8,200-square-footelower area.
The stark white double-height entrance foyer is dominated by an original 1878 fireplace and chimney breast of dusky handmade bricks that rises along the wall like a broad spine.
The four of us came out of the cold into a double-height entrance hallway, to be greeted by no one at all, apart from a very, very tall man, at least six feet five, who was looking at his mobile phone as if he was struggling to get reception, and more interested in that than in any other form of human interaction.
Behind the loggia was the full-height entrance hall.
The loggia leads into the double-height entrance hall.
The interior centres on the double-height entrance hall, Burges having avoided the error that he had made at the McConnochie House when he placed a vast central staircase in the middle of the building.
The interior centres on the double-height entrance hall, its painted ceiling depicting the astrological signs of the constellations, arranged in the positions they held when the house was first occupied.
A notable feature is the triple-height entrance hall; it is the core of the building, surrounded by the main rooms of the palace, and it is remarkable for its double dome, parabolic within and conical on the outside, a solution typical of Byzantine art.
