Wenyi Zhu 840 567 Studio D
Michael Li 914 064 Studio C
Andrew Kurniawan 917 857 Studio E
A House on a Fringe Lot
A Fringe Lot Adjacencies, path, nature strip, street; proximities in suggestion of administrative boundaries, marking a defined lot. Repeated 2:1 rectangular parcel of a typical suburban lot with a front, a back, and two sides, yet strikingly specific. Two fronts are apparent. One repeats its serial neighbours on a shorter edge. The subsequent front terminates the street - itself parallel to light wire fencing, a provisional demarcation between the suburb and the field. The short edge set back confronting the neighbour’s driveway, a brick surface of protruding volume, resumed by a timber fencing type in consensus for uniformity and sign of privacy. The volume recesses for a side yard and terminates for a bounded backyard. In opposition, a front yard presents a boundless void with its neighbours. Here, the lawn is acquiesced; an agreed ideal, a perverse neatness, a welcoming facade. A retaining wall of concrete sleepers contains the flattened ground plane, as it suggests occupancy in negotiation with the field. Timber fencing planted atop, inquire the lot’s territorial latency in contention with the temporality of its fringe condition. Positioned on its title boundary against the field and halfway through its longer edges, strict suburban frontality is enforced.
Domestication Domestication is spectral, not merely sequential. It concerns both material presence and duration simultaneously. Constructed by markings, alterations, and/ or persisting occupation, an area is claimed ownership in contestation with public domain and the untended. In the fringe, domesticity occurs indifferently abutting the field, present as abrupt material boundary enforcing permanence to its latent edge condition. It seeks to establish a single datum for the suburb while the field inevitably sits in conjunction. Domestication is both materialised and yet to be. Here, the lot’s edge is released; softer demarcation occurs through occupation and maintenance. Marking gauge between cared garden and permitted field, placed in awareness of the edge temporality. Garden and house procured in equal hierarchy, interior-exterior dichotomy is re-assessed. Roofs, walls, and floors define their own presence while at times, nullify one another’s assumed role; after all they are all mere acts of cover, enclosure, and area. Distributions and clusters, division and proximity, inhabitation and occupation navigates between these slippages. Domestication subists as undefined gradient.
A Fringe Lot A Fringe SiteLot Plan Site Plan
Legislatively explicit spatially latent, the fringe present as in between suburbia and the field. Fencing marks the demarcation of ownership; serial, internally bound, externally indifferent, containing each house and the backyard while avoiding the field beyond. Here, convention is assessed.
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Suburban Lot and Field A Fringe Lot Site Long Section
Concrete sleepers and paling fence are removed, spatial-visual dialogue between the suburban lot and the field is re-established. Flatness of the lot is released, conversing with abutting ground plane. Temporality of the fringe condition is permitted and domesticated.
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Perpetual Relation A Fringe Lot Site Short Section
Light wire and mesh, two fencing types of generous spatial-opacity re-mediate perpetual relation between the lot, the suburb, and the field. A good enough neighbour, timber fence height considers first privacy, and second niceness.
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Customary Suburban A Fringe Lot Site Elevation
Street, nature strip, utilities, path, lawn, house; a hierarchical procession of suburban material language subsists when approaching the lot proper. Front lawns construct a shared void, defining and re-defining a customary suburban frontality. Here, it is not mere display but between garden and domestic life.
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Undefined Entry A Fringe LotSite Plan Entry Plan
A large sliding wall present on the lot’s short edge towards the shared suburban front, more an enclosure than an entry; while a door with standard proportion positioned on the lot’s long edge, a concentrated entry point on a boundary plane. Neither a front nor an entry is defined.
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Occupation and Entry
A Fringe Lot Entry (internal) Elevation
Sliding corrugated metal enclosure traverses between 2 quadrants, suburban frontality materialised between garden and domestic life. Neither house nor garden first, typologically a garage or a mere unenclosed area. Ground, garden, a raised floor, and a concrete step in between, delineation of area for occupation and access.
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Entry and Orientation
A Fringe Lot Entry Render
A concentrated entry point sits on the lot’s long edge, a boundary for a hallway: a kind of corridor in a garden in a house. Corrugated metal walls, metal panels, mesh fencing, and sliding glass panels. Placement displaced, primary enclosures presents non-definite entry points while recalibrating the house-garden’s proportion and orientation; is it the house, front, side, or back yard?
House-garden A Fringe Lot Entry Section
Garden is not surplus but the house itself equally. Slippages between cover, area, enclosure, and subenclosure against floor and ground - spatially and perceptually. Interior and exteriority subsists fully, partially, or barely, and in between.
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Undefined Centre
A Fringe Lot Centre Render
The centre does not contain but redistribute. Primary walls of equal length span across, demarcating the lot into 4 undefined portions. A bed on a patio in a room; chair and storage in a room that is mostly a garden. Inhabitation and occupation navigates area, enclosure, and cover, between floor-ground and house-garden perpetually.
Placement and Distribution
A Fringe LotSite Plan Centre Plan
Placement of primary walls navigates between the lot’s width and observation of its edges. It is more distant from the lot’s edge towards the field while referencing the suburban front convention; common in position but not definition. Objects and occupancy manifest continuity of domesticity between and within quadrants; grouped or sparsely distributed, but not contained.
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Sub-enclosure
A Fringe Lot Centre (internal) Elevation
An enclosed bed, storage, chair, and lamp sit close to a kitchen unit, a toilet, and garden. Room is not object contained but assemblage in between sub-enclosures, enclosures, and beyond. Kitchen exhaust, heater, and metal plate relief are static in placement, orienting subsequent occupancy distribution. 0
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Not a Side Yard
A Fringe Lot Centre Section
Legislatively obligating yet spatially confronting, neighbouring volume occupy boundary before it recesses. Garden awkwardly abuts paling fence and raised floor; an edge occupied for an open bath or merely a verandah. 3 metre setback is maintained; not for politeness, not a side yard, but room extended or floor divided.
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Allowing for Garden
A Fringe Lot Edge Section
Garden allocation follows excavation, in preparation for floor and enclosure placement. Thus, room and garden ecology is established in tandem not as exclusives. Ground is disrupted and replaced by bare soil, creating vacancy for re-germination. Here, garden logic is one of allowance rather than literal placements.
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Spatial Act of Gardening
A Fringe LotSite Plan Edge Plan
Excavation provisions ecology. Soil is raked to redistribute compaction after concrete sleepers are removed, disrupting and thus curating. Intact ground is preserved, although disrupted for access and services and thus curated through uses. Further, a sprinkler defines a radius, by watering and thus also curating.
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Placed and Displaced
A Fringe Lot Edge Elevation
Bins, water meter, sprinkler, a 4 by 2 metres slab; a patio sort of, house and garden in between. Thermal curtain, sliding corrugated metal wall, and mesh fence gate. Placed and displaced, enclosures are acts of occupation, determining spatial articulation by change of demarcation, transparency, or continuity. Front, back, or side yard; or partially enclosed outdoor room.
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Alignment of Elements
A Fringe Lot Edge Render
Slab gauges between field, garden, and house, territorially and literally holding the ground. Thermal curtain, sliding corrugated metal wall, and mesh fence gate. Boundary is not definite datum but assemblage of elements negotiating territory through proximity, placement, and displacement, present and latent. Alignment of elements, domestication subsists in house-garden and in between.