@ossobuco,
A tempering thought - please listen to Marco and don't just leap around with new ideas. Your enthusiasm will trip you, you will **** up from it, I can promise. Stop and breathe.
Plus, it is half his. Calm down.
You are like a toddling design student - I recognize it, I was one. (I'm so glad we never brought a lap pool into the bathroom..)
A friend had lived in a FLWright house, leased. There was a water channel into the house. Various varmints came in, I forget which by now. That was back in Wisconsin, long ago.
Years after my husband and I worked on our bungalow (bungalow!), a pal/design partner and I had a client that had a semi famous house, to be remodeled. There was still the whole thing of water into the house.
I don't know how that place is now, I bet it's changed. It was a place with layered history. I bet it's now very different.
When I say pay attention to the house, I mean it.