The plan is composed of five rooms of equal size and proportion arranged in interlocking loops around two room cores, containing the dwelling’s wet areas. These otherwise identical rooms are differentiated by their adjacencies and openings to the cores, to each other, and out to the garden. At the plan’s centre, two rooms open onto each other and to the semi-enclosed kitchen, providing a moment of relief from the directionality of the looped plan. These rooms provide the amenity and connection of the typical open-plan living, dining, and kitchen, while retaining the integrity of each room. The plan responds to the suburban tripartite front of garage, entry, and main bedroom, adapting the garage as an open carport adjoining the house proper, with the entry signified by a verandah portico. The carport and house both adopt skillion roofs, sharing a single implied ridgeline in the void over the portico. This void enables a simultaneous reading of a unified primary facade in the form of a broken pediment, and the lower skillion roof form as an annex separate to the house proper.
Looped Rooms and Yards
The dwellings are arranged on their plots such that they share a front alignment, repeating the broken pediment of the street facade in groups of three throughout the landscape. This repetition generates small common plazas, or shared front yards between grouped dwellings, with the carport providing a buffer to the more private backyard. The front portico frames a passage through to this private backyard, where its structure takes the form of a side pergola. Centred above this pergola, the larger of the two skillion roofs presents a second ridgeline, echoing the pediment form of the front facade while reducing the dwelling’s mass into the back garden. The spacing of the portico columns mediates a relationship between plan and facade, establishing a 3 meter spacing against the pinwheeled internal order of the plan. This column spacing frames the openings into the plan, grouping both the front and side pergola doors with an adjacent window, signifying two moments of entry for the dwelling’s two fronts. A duplex reading is thereby offered, establishing a dual occupancy in the two loops, connected through the shared middle.
Suburban Settlement
0
10
50m
A Shared Front Yard
0
1
5
10m
Typical Family Dwelling
0
1
5m
Duplex Dwelling
0
1
5m
Room Core and Enfilade
Living, Dining, Kitchen
Street Facade
0
1
5m
Garden Facade & Long Section
0
1
5m
*Verandah Condition
ROOF - Corrugated Roof Sheet, Colorbond Ironstone - Hip and End Capping, Colorbond Ironstone - 140 x 30 Fascia, Painted to Match Colorbond Ironstone - 9mm FC Sheet Soffit Lining - 35 x 70 MGP10 Roof Purlins - Prefabricated MGP10 Roof Truss - R6.0 Rockwool Insulation - 35 x 70 MGP10 Ceiling Battens - 13mm Plasterboard Ceiling, Dulux Natural White, Matt EXTERIOR WALL - 9mm FC Cladding, Dulux Natural White, Low Sheen - 150mm Shiplap Weatherboards, Dulux Dieskau, Matt - 45 x 90 MGP10 Framing - Vapour Barrier - R2.5 Rockwool Insulation - 45 x 140 F14 Hardwood Lintel - 840 x 1360 Aluminium Framed Double Glazed Window - 25 x 100 Dressed Pine Window Reveal Lining, Dulux Natural White, Gloss - 13mm Plasterboard, Dulux Natural White, Matt - 20 x 90 Pine Skirting, Dulux Natural White, Gloss PERGOLA - 45 x 190 F7 Pergola Joists, Dulux Dieskau, Low Sheen - 45 x 240 F7 Pergola Beam, Dulux Dieskau, Low Sheen - 12mm Marine Grade Plywood Cladding, Dulux Dieskau, Low Sheen - Aluminium Capping, to Match Dulux Dieskau DECK - 19 x 90 Spotted Gum Decking - 45 x 140 F14 Hardwood Joists - Joist Hanger, Hot Dipped Galvanised - 45 x 140 F14 Hardwood Ledger Board, Flashed to External Wall - 100 x 100 MGP10 Column on Hot Dipped Galvanised Stirrup - In Situ Concrete Stump Footing FLOOR AND FOOTING - 15mm White Oiled Oak Engineered Timber Floorboards - 19mm Yellow Tongue Subfloor - 45 x 140 F14 Hardwood Joists - 45 x 140 F14 Hardwood Bearer - Ant Capping - Brick Perimeter Walling with Engaged Piers - In Situ Concrete Strip Footing
Garden Facade Detail
0
0.2
1m
A Shared Front Yard
Private Domestic Garden