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Australian Residential Architecture and Design

SPIRITED SIMPLICITY

ISSUE 130

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Inventive homes that do more with less

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At a Glance

From the Editorial Team Musings

Contributors

Fresh Finds Products

Redfern Warehouse Meet the Owners 44 Working with an Architect A short brief and the owners' trust gave the architects licence to be bold. Merve Kahraman Studio 47 Based in New York and Istanbul, this designer creates furniture and lighting inspired by classic literature and astronomy. Inside Out Outdoor Products Lighting, furniture and ovens for luxurious alfresco living.

Winwood Mckenzie One to Watch

The New Granny Flat Spotlight

A Design Studio Studio

Winwood Mckenzie's refined projects express the researchdriven approach of this engaging young practice.

As the shape of the suburban household changes, granny flats are being reinvented to offer a new type of home.

Designer Alex Fitzpatrick works with glass to explore the interplay between light, space and materials.

Make an Entrance 50 Doors and Windows Doors and windows to transform facades and bring the outdoors in. Bookshelf 54 Reading A reading list that captures Australian design, from breeze blocks to suburban Baroque.

Rob Kennon Architects In Profile

Page Street by Clare Cousins Architects First House

Osborne House by Richard Leplastrier Revisited

Kangaroo Valley Outhouse 138 Postscript The quintessential outhouse is reimagined and cleverly camouflaged by a cloak of mirrors.

Rob Kennon Architects focus on the people who build and inhabit its projects, fostering a humanist design practice.

Clare Cousins, director of Clare Cousins Architects, reflects on her first project as being a lesson in diplomacy.

Operated by pulleys akin to those on a yacht, Osborne House, built in 1995, responds to the magic of the bush.

HOUSES 130

AT A GLANCE

130

The homes in this issue celebrate simplicity, with pared-back materials expertly sculpted into spaces that reflect the dynamics of Australian living. 20 Glebe House by Chenchow Little New house Sydney, NSW

Alteration + addition Hobart, Tas

Redfern Warehouse by Ian Moore Architects

White House by Robson Rak

Vikkiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Place by Curious Practice

Albert Villa by Bureau Proberts

Alteration + addition Sydney, NSW

Alteration + addition Melbourne, Vic

New house Newcastle, NSW

Alteration + addition Brisbane, Qld

104 Balmoral House by Chrofi New house Sydney, NSW

28 Mount Stuart Greenhouse by Bence Mulcahy

112 Sussex by Powell and Glenn and Mim Design

118

124

Bundeena Beach House by Grove Architects

Albert Park Terrace by Wellard Architects

New house Sydney, NSW

Alteration + addition Melbourne, Vic

Apartment Melbourne, Vic

CONTENTS

Musings

Despite how easy it may seem, simplicity in architecture is not straightforward – designing a house is complex and requires thoughtful planning and restraint. The homes in this issue express simplicity in varied ways, reflecting how we can do more with less. These homes are not reductive, but are instead understated and elegant. At Glebe House by Chenchow Little (page 20), a minimalist palette heightens the sculptural quality of the architecture, while at Vikki’s Place by Curious Practice (page 72) familiar materials like plywood bring tactility and warmth. In these homes, harmonious materials help to make the design ideas clear while also providing a robust setting for the kids and grandkids that may come along in years to come. Our Spotlight on granny flats (page 57) gives a snapshot of a type of micro-scale architecture that is shaping suburbia. No longer just an afterthought, plonked on a site, the new granny flat is a considered, flexible dwelling, fit for any stage of life. Homes like these, and many others in this issue, make us reflect on what it means to live simply.

02 Take in the work of twelve leading ceramicists in an exhibition designed by John Wardle Architects. Held at Heide Museum of Modern Art until 20 October 2019, An Idea Needing to be Made explores contemporary interpretations of clay vessels and interrogates the way that ceramicists think about function, display and purpose. The exhibition centres around an oversized table, designed by the architects, which is composed of forty-five individual tables. Photograph: Christian Capurro. heide.com.au

01 Explore some of Sydney’s most important and architecturally significant buildings and spaces. Sydney Open (2–3 November 2019) presents the opportnity to visit more than eighty sites across the city. Join a Focus Tour on 2 November to glimpse inside architecturally designed private homes. Or, on 3 November, trace your own architectural adventure from the open-access program, which includes some of Sydney’s most remarkable buildings. Tickets are on sale now. Pictured is Tom Uren House by Richard Leplastrier which will be part of the Focus Tours program. Photograph: Harry Blair-Rath. slm.is/open

Gemma Savio and Katelin Butler

03 Write to us at houses@archmedia.com.au Subscribe at architecturemedia.com Find us @housesmagazine

MUSINGS

03 Celebrate one hundred years since the founding of the Bauhaus. In the centenary year of the renowned modernist architecture and design school, Bauhaus Now! explores the Bauhaus legacy in Australia – both for contemporary artists and for the visionary, collectivist ideals and radical practices that originated at the Bauhaus school. The exhibition will be presented by Buxton Contemporary until 27 October 2019. Photograph: Christian Capurro. buxtoncontemporary.com

Johanna Occasional Chair & Otway Sofa by Kett

Anfora Table & Velis Armchairs by Potocco

Tibbo Table & Armchairs by Dedon

Senja Sofa by Tribu Exclusive to

Live Life Well Indoors & Out www.coshliving.com.au

Collingwood Cheltenham Sydney Brisbane Perth

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9281 9532 9317 3254 9415

1999 0464 3011 0000 2522

Contributors Editorial director Katelin Butler Editorial enquiries Katelin Butler T: +61 3 8699 1000 houses@archmedia.com.au

Managing director Ian Close Publisher Sue Harris General manager operations Jacinta Reedy

Associate editor Gemma Savio Assistant content editor Stephanie McGann Alysia Bennett Writer Alysia Bennett is a lecturer in Monash University’s Department of Architecture and is affiliated with Cumulus Studio. Her research concentrates on overcoming barriers to the densification and diversification of the suburbs in order to improve the affordability, availability and quality of housing.

Rory Gardiner Photographer Rory Gardiner is an architecture photographer based in both London and Melbourne. Rory’s work interrogates the nature of human experience through space and materiality, using traditional analogue processes. Rory has worked with acclaimed architects and editorial publications.

Editorial team Cassie Hansen Josh Harris Alexa Kempton Mary Mann Production Simone Wall Design Metrik studiometrik.com General manager sales & digital Michael Pollard Account managers Amy Banks Tash Fisher Lana Golubinsky Victoria Hawthorne

Published by Architecture Media Pty Ltd ACN 008 626 686 Level 6, 163 Eastern Road South Melbourne Vic 3205 Australia T: +61 3 8699 1000 F: +61 3 9696 2617 publisher@archmedia.com.au architecturemedia.com New South Wales office Level 1, 3 Manning Street Potts Point NSW 2011 Australia T: +61 2 9380 7000 F: +61 2 9380 7600 Endorsed by The Australian Institute of Architects and the Design Institute of Australia.

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Sharyn Cairns Photographer

Beth George Writer

Sharyn is a commercial photographer with a specialist portfolio spanning interiors, food, travel, and lifestyle. She is committed to creating beautiful images that capture a mood and an emotion, playing with light and shadows to create levels of depth and distinctive, memorable scenes.

Beth George is an educator and sole practitioner in architecture. Her research centres on urbanism, design and drawing. She is a senior lecturer in the University of Newcastle’s School of Architecture and Built Environment.

Print management DAI Print Distribution Australia: Ovato Australia (bookshops) and International: Eight Point Distribution

Cover: Mount Stuart Greenhouse by Bence Mulcahy. Photograph: Adam Gibson.

CONTRIBUTORS

Member Circulations Audit Board

Subscriptions architecturemedia.com/store subscribe@archmedia.com.au or contact the publisher above ISSN 1440-3382

Copyright: HOUSES® is a registered trademark of Architecture Media Pty Ltd. All designs and plans in this publication are copyright and are the property of the architects and designers concerned.

2019

Daylesford Longhouse by Partners Hill

The Garden Bunkie by Reddog Architects

Hawthorn House by Edition Office

Brisbane Riverbank House by Owen Architecture

Thanks to our 2019 Houses Awards supporters:

Balmain Rock by Benn + Penna

House in Darlinghurst by Tribe Studio

Whynot St Pool and Carport by Kieron Gait Architects with Dan Young Landscape Architecture

Teneriffe House by Vokes and Peters

The Bae Tas by Work by Liz and Alex

Bay Guarella House by Peter Stutchbury Architecture

SEE YOUR HOUSE HERE NEXT YEAR

Jacaranda House by SP Studio

Courted House by Breakspear Architects

Brick and Gable House by Breathe Architecture

Empire by Austin Maynard Architects

Darling Lane by Welsh + Major Architects

Mount Stuart Greenhouse by Bence Mulcahy

Cloister House by MORQ

Yandoit Cabin by Adam Kane Architects

Palazzo Marcello by Freadman White with Anon Studio

Fresh finds

A rug that references aerial views of a verdant wine region, stone tiles inspired by the scents and tastes of Morocco and a curvaceous bathroom collection – these are just some of the exciting new products featured here.

Find more residential products: selector.com and productnews.com.au

01 03

01 Lounge Chair JH97 The latest collaboration between Fritz Hansen and Spanish designer Jaime Hayon, Lounge Chair JH97 strikes an artful balance of new and traditional Danish design elements. Available in Australia exclusively from Cult, the chair has a low-slung silhouette that is elegant and relaxed. cultdesign.com.au

03 Balla table lamp King Living’s new Balla floor and table lamps (pictured) take their name from the Italian word for “dance.” Featuring a striking black terrazzo base, with a textured metal body and adjustable diffused spheres, each lamp evokes the fluid and graceful movements of two dancers. kingliving.com.au

02 Fatima’s Reflection stone tiles Fatima’s Reflection from Fibonacci Stone’s Muse range is “a tagine-ful of heartfelt nostalgia.” The stone tile is named after a young university student who, together with creative director Michael Karakolis, designed it with reference to her home country, Morocco. fibonaccistone.com.au

04 Nimbus Mirror Designed by Krøyer-Sætter-Lassen for Menu, Nimbus Mirror is a functional and beautiful object for the home. Measuring one hundred centimetres in diameter, the mirror is surrounded by a bronzed or polished brass frame with decorative screws. menu.as

HOUSES 130

PRODUCTS

05 Smooth Impasto colour collection Porter’s Paints has launched Smooth Impasto, a stunning collection of forty-four rich, textured colours with a velvety matt finish. From cool blues through to warm, cocooning reds, such as ‘Santa Cruz’ and ‘Dolce Vita’ (pictured), the hues impart depth and character to any space. porterspaints.com

06 Zimi tapware collection Designed in Australia, Zimi is Phoenix’s most versatile tapware collection to date. It offers twenty-seven colour and finishing combinations across a range of fixtures, including the Zimi Vessel Mixer (pictured). Zimi’s slender, coloured handles are easily interchangeable. phoenixtapware.com.au

08 Ovolo pendant The sculptural form of the Ovolo pendant typifies the artistry inherent in Articolo’s design philosophy. Ovolo’s organic shape conceals its light source – a disc, encased in brass, that appears to float behind a mouth-blown Murano glass form, washing the wall in a subtle glow. articololighting.com

10 Nave furniture collection Designed by Skeehan Studio exclusively for Stylecraft, the Nave collection features a tubular steel frame influenced by nautical construction processes. It includes lounges, an armchair, a table range and an ottoman, and is upholstered in fabric or leather. stylecraft.com.au

07 Handcrafted rugs To celebrate its ten-year anniversary, Armadillo and Co has added three new rugs to its Classic Collection – Sonoma, Palermo and Andorra. Hand-knotted from wool and jute, Sonoma (pictured) evokes aerial views of California’s wine country. Photograph: Sharyn Cairns. armadillo-co.com

09 Rockwell bathroom collection The curvaceous new Rockwell Collection by London’s the Water Monopoly is now available in Australia from the English Tapware Company. Comprising bath, toilet and basin designs, the Rockwell features a range of charming colours, from ‘Sherbert Yellow’ to ‘Willow Green.’ englishtapware.com.au

11 Cover storage system Rimadesio’s Cover system has a suite of new finishes and structural components, making it ideal for wardrobes and storage niches. The door panels are available in a range of colours and finishes, including porcelain and soft fabrics, and are affixed with invisible hinges. rimadesio.it

PRODUCTS

AWSAUSTRALIA

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ELEVATEALUMINIUM.COM.AU Pictured — KV House. Photography: SRH. Architect: Turner.

ARCHITECTURAL WINDOWS AND DOORS BY

GLEBE HOUSE BY CHENCHOW LITTLE

HOUSES 130

NEW HOUSE

Crafted with deference to the sculptural potential of architecture, this compact family home with “elastic” geometry is a lesson in tectonic editing.

Words by Gemma Savio Photography by Peter Bennetts

Design is essentially a process of editing. In the context of architecture, the infinite possibilities for how space and material might be assembled need to be imagined, assessed and then executed – first on paper and in models, and finally constructed at full scale. Glebe House by Chenchow Little is sited on an awkwardly shaped block, hemmed in by neighbours. The compact dwelling was designed for a family of five and conveys a succinct architectural approach based on skilful editing. Described by practice director Tony Chenchow as “an exploration of volume, form and light,” Glebe House reflects the architects’ resolute commitment to expanding the sculptural potential of architecture. Beginning with a solid form, derived by extruding the occupiable site area as dictated by local council setback requirements, the architects strategically carved away at the building envelope to create windows and voids that allow the interior to be bathed in natural light. “When you have the living room on the ground floor on an inner-city site [like this], it can be quite dark,” says Tony. “For us, it’s really about how we maximize light from the top as well as the view to tree canopies and the sky.” What has resulted is a Swiss-cheese-like architecture of seemingly irregular curves and hollows. “It’s a combination of something that’s quite logical and at the same time intuitive,” explains Tony. “The geometry is very elastic; some of the curves are circular but others are stretched to fit the space.” While the relationship between the parabolic arch windows and voids becomes clear as you examine the junctions internally, an unfolded plan and elevation diagram drawn by the architects exposes the logical connection between these emphatic architectural elements. Glebe House is the latest iteration of spatial gameplay in Chenchow Little’s repertoire. “We like playing with geometry – whether it’s triangular,

GLEBE HOUSE

5 Sydney, NSW

New house

Family

Site Floor

faceted or circular, it’s the same principle,” says Tony. “We use geometry to blur the experience of what’s inside and outside in a way that elongates the space. When you start slicing off corners and cutting out openings, you begin to dissolve the building.” Once inside the house, the heft of the openings becomes apparent. Deep sills milled from solid timber sit within walls that, despite being built using lightweight construction, appear weighty and substantial. With their arches inverted, the parabolic windows effectively obscure the periphery, cutting out views to the neighbours while maximizing the perceptible amount of sky. The measured method applied to the design of the walls, windows and voids has been extended to each space in the home, which have been sculpted at a more intimate scale by the insertion of fluid joinery items that support the day-to-day needs of family life. Running along the northern edge of the plan, a suspended bench unifies the galley kitchen and the dining room, while an oak-veneered service core, which conceals storage and appliances, subtly divides the kitchen from the living spaces, making the otherwise open plan more functional. Adjacent to this, a long study desk for homework and drawing sits beneath the double height of the western corner window. Upstairs in the hallway-cum-gallery, which is flanked by broad, curved voids, the points where adjacent walls meet are made concave to skirt around strategically placed downlights. Paying reverence to the owners’ art collection, the architects moved the door to the main bedroom off axis allowing an artwork to hold prime position in the sightline. In keeping with the modest scale of the rest of the house, the bedrooms are allocated only the space necessary to comfortably envelope a bed. Inverted-arched windows offer each room its own character, creating an edited relationship to surrounding trees, neighbours and the street. Far from ostentatious, the interior is wrapped with materials and surfaces that were selected to enhance the home’s sculptural quality and for their ability to carry the patina of life. The bathrooms, lined in simple pennyround tiles, are devoid of excessive finishes; their quality relies on the spatial integrity of the rooms and their relationship to the skylights and windows. The colour throughout the home – from the walls, window frames and finishes to the exterior facia, guttering and even the roof – is limited to a single shade of muted green-grey, heightening the experience of space and light. The architectural detailing expresses the building’s assemblage; for instance, the point at which the study desk is cut away leaves breathing space for a steel column that sits in line with the apex of the window and steps away from the wall, demystifying how the architecture has been achieved. Where ornament is introduced to the composition, it is done so as a playful exaggeration of the filigree that adorns the Victorian terraces in the surrounding neighbourhood. A scalloped steel entry portico and crescent-shaped frosted glazing between window mullions rewrites the historical language. These considered design decisions and careful editing have resulted in architecture in which the unnecessary has been completely omitted. The elements that make the cut are strictly those that play a role in the functionality of the home and in realizing the architects’ sculptural intent.

HOUSES 130

NEW HOUSE

374 m² 202 m²

Design 1 y 4 m Build 2 y

Products Roofing: Lysaght Klip-lok in Colorbond ‘Surfmist’ External walls: Sculptform spotted gum cladding in Dulux ‘Colorbond Surfmist’ Internal walls: Sculptform banjo pine cladding in Dulux ‘Colorbond Surfmist’; American oak veneer Windows: Custom timber windows by Windoor in Dulux ‘Colorbond Surfmist’ Doors: Schüco sliding doors Flooring: Polished concrete slab; solid oak timber floorboards Lighting: Flos OK suspension lights; Louis Poulsen AJ 50 wall lights; Artemide Teti; Artek Bilberry pendant light by Alvar Aalto Kitchen: Corian benchtop in ‘Cameo White’; custom American oak veneer joinery in clear polyurethane ‘satin’ finish; Siemens gas cooktop; Sirius downdraft rangehood; Miele appliances; Fisher and Paykel integrated dish drawers; Blanco undermount sinks; Blanco tapware; Zip filter tap Bathroom: Bettertiles pennyround mosaic tiles; Candana basins; tapware and toilet from Rogerseller; Kaldewei bath Heating and cooling: Daikin split system air-conditioning; Bosch underfloor heating Other: Custom dining table by JP Finsbury; custom master bed by David Muston; Artek 400 ‘Tank’ armchair, Table 90A, Stool 60 and Chair 66 by Alvar Aalto from Anibou; Nau Fat Tulip sofa and Nest tables by Adam Goodrum from Cult; Armadillo and Co rugs

01 From the spiral stairs to elongated voids, each element is integral to the home’s functionality and the design intent.

02 A suspended bench unites the kitchen and dining spaces, while the service core is a separating device. 03 The inverted arched windows edit out views to neighbours while maximizing the amount of visible sky. 04 A play with geometry has been used to blur the distinction between inside and outside.

GLEBE HOUSE

1 2 3 4 5

Entry Laundry Study Kitchen Dining

6 7 8 9 10

Living Terrace Garage Bedroom Void

10 4 3 8

Ground floor 1:400

HOUSES 130

7 2

9 1

First floor 1:400

NEW HOUSE

05 The geometry is described by the architect as â&#x20AC;&#x153;elastic,â&#x20AC;? with some of the curves stretched to fit the space. 06 Bedrooms are modest in size, in keeping with the carefully edited nature of the house. 07 Upstairs, the points where adjacent walls meet are made concave to skirt around downlights.

GLEBE HOUSE

Concept diagram

Architect Chenchow Little +61 2 9357 4333 mail@chenchowlittle.com chenchowlittle.com

HOUSES 130

Project team Tony Chenchow, Stephanie Little, Mark Hill, Joshua Mulford Builder Lochbuild Structural engineer Benvenuti S.C. Hydraulic engineer Taylor Consulting Landscaping Spirit Level Town planning Mersonn Environmental consultant Damian Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole Town Planning Heritage consultant City Plan Group Traffic consultant Traffix Quantity surveyor Bayley Donald and Associates Arborist Earthscape Horticultural Services

NEW HOUSE

MOUNT STUART GREENHOUSE BY B E N C E M U LCA H Y

HOUSES 130

03 04

MOUNT STUART GREENHOUSE

This addition to a grand earlytwentieth-century home in Hobart reads as a generous garden room, housing a new dining and kitchen space that captures the scale and movement of the nearby cypress tree.

Words by Judith Abell Photography by Adam Gibson

The brief for a residential project can come in many forms. But at its richest, it maps out a way of living throughout the year, highlighting the moments of daily life that the owners feel will bring pleasure. The clients for this alteration and addition had a series of clear ideas about the elements they needed: a bathing room for quiet contemplation, a kitchen you could cartwheel in, a room to view a giant cypress, dining tables for summer and winter, and as much sun as possible. Importantly, they wanted an extension that felt lived in from day one, as a suitable match for their grand, early twentieth-century Hobart home. Architecture Practice Bence Mulcahy took on this lively brief and entered into a collaborative process with the clients. While the overarching conceptual brief was for a garden room, the programmatic brief asked for a new kitchen, dining room and sitting space on the ground floor and an ensuite and dressing room above, with some refurbishment of the existing guest bathroom and the laundry along the way. The new work was developed to replace a conservatory extension, built several decades ago, that was difficult to heat and too small for this family of six, which includes one large dog.

HOUSES 130

Exploring many ideas through cardboard architectural models, Bence Mulcahy landed on a box within an articulated box as the structural and spatial concept for the new work. The steel structure, with custom steel casement windows, creates a stiff external skin and roof from which the smaller box, containing the first-floor program, is hung. This move allows the full volume of the double height to be enjoyed on the outer edges of the extension. The pattern of steel mullions and transoms across the face of the new work picks up on the detail of the main house â&#x20AC;&#x201C; busier at the base, in line with the iron balustrade of the existing verandah, and cleaner and more open at the top, matching the proportions and fenestration of the upper floor. The entire new building slides in under the eve of the upper floor, keeping the profile of the extension to a minimum without feeling diminutive. Beyond the larger architectural moves, it is the attention to detail and craftsmanship that define this project, with the clients as engaged in the process as the architects. The family wanted authentic materials wherever possible â&#x20AC;&#x201C; solid timber, brass, ceramic, steel. They had imported lush, hand-painted Austrian tiles

ALTERATION + ADDITION

01 The new dining and kitchen space grows from and encloses the southern corner of the existing house. 02 The addition was conceived as a box hung within another box and provides a generous volume to inhabit. 03 Inside the new glazed addition, the owners are engulfed by the movement of the nearby cypress and pear trees. 04 The kitchen benchtop and sink are wrapped in burnished brass that will patina with use.

5 Hobart, Tas

Alteration + addition

Family

for each of the bathrooms and also wanted to explore techniques like tadelakt, a Moroccan method for handpolishing hard plaster. The kitchen benchtop is a central feature of the new room, with its surface and sink wrapped in burnished brass that improves with use as its fine mesh of scratches builds a patina. All other plumbing fittings throughout the extension are brass. The patterning of the Austrian tiles has been used as a motif for custom, laser-cut brass grilles that conceal all the workings of the ducted heating system while offering a nod to the handiwork often seen in houses of this era. Deep greens in the paintwork key in to the tones of the cypress tree and flush timber joinery, stained black or left natural, is deliberately recessive, allowing the jewel-like brass surfaces to come to the fore. In the upper-floor ensuite, the tadelakt technique gives the bone-coloured surfaces the texture of honed stone. The clients’ insistence on a lived-in feel has been translated by Bence Mulcahy to an environment that, while highly considered, has a surprising sense of ease; the usual mess of family life beds down the design rather than obstructing its reading. One of the clients describes the new work as being like a nineteenth-century still life painting. The passion for texture and material has come from the architects and the clients, with the architecture and carefully selected furnishings combining lavishly against the deeply coloured backgrounds and brought to life by light. The brief has been met – the clients easily describe the moments that they cherish within the new work. Always an early riser, one of the couple describes drawing a bath prior to dawn and watching the sunrise from the tub. The moment when the beam of light lands on the water is like her own little piece of James Turrell, she jokes.In summer, they love to sit in the large window seat, where the box is double height, caught within the leaves of the pear tree under the mesmeric movement of the cypress. There is an unexpected delight in the reflections of this glazed room, with little pieces of Derwent River visible in the glass, the trees “printed” across the lustre of the brass benchtop and the large woven lights seemingly repeated throughout the space.

MOUNT STUART GREENHOUSE

3 Site 1, 526 m² Floor 361 m²

Design 1 y 6 m Build 1 y

Products Roofing: Lysaght Klip-lok in ‘Ironstone’ External walls: Custom steel framing with double-glazed infill Windows and doors: Custom casement windows and steelframed sliding doors in Dulux Luxathane SPX by Wellington Steelworks Flooring: Tasmanian oak floorboards in Organoil finish Lighting: Weylandts pendant lights; Inlite Platform uplights Kitchen: Steel Cucine Ascot Oven in ‘Anthracite’; custom brass sink by Walter Welding and Sheetmetal; Sirius downdraft rangehood; Miele dishwasher; Brodware Yokato kitchen mixer in ‘Rumbled Brass Organic’ Bathroom: Karak Kuqua Grid tiles; Brodware Yokato tapware, City hand shower and rose in ‘Rumbled Brass Organic’; Vitra S-line Alto toilet from Rogerseller; Apaiser Haven bath in ‘Diamond White’ Heating and cooling: Alderlea freestanding wood stove External elements: Tasmanian sandstone paving Other: Interia O Series oak joinery handles in Organoil finish

05 The rich textures and deep colours are reminiscent of a nineteenth-century still life painting. Artwork (L-R): Tim Burns, Donna Lougher.

6 5

7 7

5 12

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Entry Sitting Living Verandah Bedroom Laundry Dining Kitchen Terrace Spa Study Void

Ground floor 1:400

HOUSES 130

First floor 1:400

ALTERATION + ADDITION

06 Tadelakt, a Moroccan method for hand-polishing plaster, adds texture to the bathrooms. 07 The home facilitates day-to-day pleasures such as watching the sunrise from the bathtub. 07

The clientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; insistence on a lived-in feel has been translated by Bence Mulcahy to an environment that, while highly considered, has a surprising sense of ease.

Architect Bence Mulcahy +61 4 1098 0180 info@bencemulcahy.com.au bencemulcahy.com.au

Project team Sophie Bence, Shamus Mulcahy, Bek Verrier, Dylan Rowbottom Builder Farquhar Constructions Engineer JMG Engineers and Planners Landscaping Daniel Magnus Furnishing Monomeith Designs

MOUNT STUART GREENHOUSE

Michele De Lucchi coming soon to produzioneprivata.com

mondoluce.com

REDFERN WAREHOUSE BY IAN MOORE ARCHITECTS

HOUSES 130

In converting a former warehouse in Sydney into a comfortable family home, the architects have applied a soft touch, retaining original brick walls and trusses, and celebrating the building’s spatial qualities.

Words by Casey Bryant Photography by Rory Gardiner

Many people dream of living in a converted warehouse. They imagine spaciousness, high ceilings, roof trusses and old bricks. One young family searched Sydney for six years before finding such a building in Redfern, only to discover that – like most warehouses – it had some serious drawbacks. West-facing and uninsulated, the building was blisteringly hot in summer and freezing through winter. The noise of rain on the raw tin roof was so deafening that conversations had to be abandoned when a storm rolled in and an unsympathetic nineties renovation had created a jumble of useless rooms. So, they employed Ian Moore Architects to completely reform the warehouse – to make it into a communal family home with gardens and a pool, a workshop and garage for a beloved car collection and a home officecum-equine genetics lab. A complex brief was made simple by locating the office/lab, garage and a guest suite on the ground floor. The remainder of the house sits above, connected via a dramatic stair and courtyard garden. The existing garage doors have been replaced by large windows to light the office. Metal louvres cover the glass, providing privacy and protection against the western sun, while skilfully referencing the original roller doors and retaining the building’s appearance. The office has a separate entry, meaning you need to leave home to go to work – a simple trick that brings professionalism to the home office and promotes neighbourly conversations as people go back and forth. An opaque glass wall between the office and the house entry

REDFERN WAREHOUSE

4 Sydney, NSW

Alteration + addition

Family

allows natural light to enter the office during the day and artificial light to be shared with the house at night. Shadows cast on the glass are a nice reminder that the family is together in this building. Ian Moore Architects has raised the floor of the courtyard and pool by a half level, a subtle shift that draws the eye upwards as you enter the home. This also means that from below, in the guest room, you feel secluded yet still connected to light, greenery and your hosts. From above, the garden is closer; you can watch the reflections in the pool and appreciate the tree canopies. Within the garden itself, the one-and-a-half-level proportion feels spacious, but not cavernous. An oversized steel stair – a feat of engineering in plate steel with concrete-filled treads – takes you up through the warehouse. Although reminiscent of an original industrial stair that may have at one time occupied the space, this new version feels solid and the treads are silent. Travelling beside the courtyard garden, the stair arrives at the generous open living room on the first floor. To one side is the kitchen, to the other an enormous custom orange couch and, ahead, a second garden – this one framed within the building’s original gable end. These areas blend together within the warehouse form, accentuating the feeling of spaciousness. Redfern Warehouse blurs domestic and industrial scales to create unique experiences. Living and garden areas feel like one. Furniture can be located to divide spaces without walls. A wide corridor, open to the living room and the courtyard, acts as a playground within the house. In it the children can deploy their entire Hot Wheels collection or, with a run-up from the bedrooms, spring through a dedicated gap in the couch. The simple and spacious plan of the house is clear; you always know where you are and can sense the location of everyone else. Adjustable louvres around the courtyard’s glass walls layer the space with privacy when needed or create internal vistas between rooms and gardens. In contrast, the small existing windows that have been retained frame external views – the orangehued bricks of the neighbouring buildings appear as if in paintings. The new works are clean and defer to the existing structure. Internal walls become glass above door height, allowing the existing trusses to continue overhead. Frameless pivoting doors prevent the need for trims to be installed on the existing timbers. A perforated mini-orb metal ceiling mimics the original, while hiding sound-deadening insulation. Throughout the house, old and new elements are further delineated by colour. Most of the structure and services are exposed, but new elements are painted grey and old are white. This striking palette, especially the white roof beams that sail from side to side, highlights the extent of the space – the original dream of warehouse living. This home harnesses the purity and generosity found in a warehouse. The simple courtyard plan and respectful insertions accommodate comfortable and connected living spaces, a unique workplace and a family car hobby. Space is cleverly tailored to not only embrace warehouse living, but to encourage play, interaction and community within the family.

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

4 Site Floor

534 m² 756 m²

Design 1 y 2 m Build 1 y 3 m

Per m² $5,998

Products External walls: Alucobond A2 cladding in ‘Signal Grey’ Internal walls: Painted plasterboard in Dulux ‘Vivid White’ Windows: Shüco powdercoated sliding doors from Central Coast Shopfronts in Dulux Duralloy ‘Stone Grey’; Alspec Eco Frame Plus framing in Dulux Duralloy ‘Stone Grey’ Doors: Frits Jurgens stainless steel door pivots; D line Knud Holscher door handles Flooring: Comcork Walk Easy flooring in ‘Steel Grey’ Lighting: Viabizzuno Cubo floodlights; Brightgreen LED downlights; Inlite LED strip light Kitchen: Dekton benchtop in ‘Ventus’; Miele oven, cooktop, rangehood and fridges; Fisher and Paykel dishwashers; A2F Tartana R tapware; Madinoz stainless steel cabinet handles Bathroom: Kaldewei Conoduo bath in ‘Alpine White’; Caroma basin and toilet; Boffi Pipe tapware and towel hooks; Calibre Concepts tiles; Halliday Baillie ventilation grilles Heating and cooling: Boffi ceiling fans; hydronic heating and solar hot water system from Smartheat Other: Foscarini Tuareg floor lamp; Living Divani sofa; Knoll MR Chairs; Porro Metallico dining table; Cappellini Hi Pad Stools; Cassina Hola dining chairs; De Padova coffee tables

01 Louvres around the courtyard’s glass walls allow for privacy and help to create internal vistas between rooms.

15 19

1 11 3

10 18 16

5 4

11 6

Ground floor 1:400

20 21

13 17

First floor 1:400

REDFERN WAREHOUSE

02 Like paintings, existing windows frame scenes of trees and neighbouring buildings. Artwork: Erin Lawlor. 03 The house blurs the domestic and the industrial, creating unique experiences. 04 Internal walls shift to glazing above door height, revealing the full extent of the existing trusses.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Entry Home office Storage Guest room Courtyard Pool Pool equipment 8 Bin store 9 Workshop 10 Garage

11 Bedroom 12 Laundry 13 Void 14 Study 15 Living 16 Sitting 17 Kitchen 18 Dining 19 Lawn 20 Terrace 21 Barbecue

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

05 Metal louvres reference the original roller doors of the warehouse and speak of its previous appearance. 06 The oversized stair is an engineering feat of plate steel and concrete-filled treads. Artwork: Studio Boot. 07 The architects raised the floor of the courtyard and pool by a half level, a subtle shift that draws the eye upwards as you enter the home.

Section 1:400

REDFERN WAREHOUSE

Architect Ian Moore Architects +61 2 8354 1887 info@ianmoorearchitects.com ianmoorearchitects.com

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

Project team Ian Moore, Emily Elliott, Maria Gutierrez, Danny Mathis Builder Elliott Projects Engineer Benvenuti S.C. Landscaping Outdoor Establishments

REDFERN WAREHOUSE MEET THE OWNERS WORKING WITH AN ARCHITECT

Ryan Curnick first encountered Ian Moore Architects’ work in the 1990s. After a decade-long search for a warehouse space to turn into a family home, Ryan engaged Ian to create a house with a “beautiful clean style” that could also function as a home office. Here, Emily Wong chats with Ryan about the process of working with an architect. Photography by Rory Gardiner

Emily Wong Could you tell me a little about your background? Ryan Curnick I grew up in country Western Australia and began my professional life as a mechanical engineer. I almost became an architect, but at the eleventh hour I decided that engineering was a safer bet. I only worked as an engineer for a couple of years before pursuing a career in patent law. Until a couple of years ago I was a partner in a big patent attorney practice. But behind the guise of the patent attorney, I’m a bit of a design geek and a classic-car nut.

01 Seeking work/life balance, the owners’ list-like project brief asked for a lab-cumhome office as well as a pool. Artwork: Anna Wili-Highfield. 02 The owners had always wanted to live in a converted warehouse and had searched for one for more than a decade.

EW Why did you decide to engage an architect? RC I think my partner and I had always planned to use an architect for this project. We had previously renovated a terrace house and had used an architect for that, and this place was a much bigger project. I’d always wanted to live in a warehouse and had been hunting for one for more than a decade. The building itself was in pretty good shape but had a long and varied history of use, with the most recent fitout incorporating a set of offices, an art gallery space and a three-bedroom apartment. We needed to solve a multitude of liveability issues including heating, cooling and insulation, and address some oddly sized rooms. When we purchased the building, we had two small children, my partner was finishing a PhD and I was a partner in a patent attorney practice, so from a time perspective we also wanted to engage an architect to manage the build.

REDFERN WAREHOUSE

EW How did you discover Ian Moore Architects? RC When I first moved to Sydney in the early 1990s, I saw Price O’Reilly House, which Ian designed in Redfern. That was the project that turned me onto him and his practice – and it’s still one of my favourite houses. Dodds House

and Davis House, both by Ian’s practice, have aged really gracefully. He has a beautifully clean style that I think fits strongly with my own [personal] aesthetic. EW How did you prepare for your first meeting with Ian? RC My partner and I (we have quite different tastes) met with five architects before narrowing our selection down to three potential architects. We gave an identical brief and budget to each, but we weren’t too picky about deliverables – we asked the architects to create a fully animated walkthrough if they thought it suited the budget, or simply three sketches on a piece of paper. EW What was your brief? RC It was a one-pager – you could almost describe it as an accommodation list. We wanted three bedrooms, a guest room if possible, a commercial space for my partner’s laboratory, a pool for our children, an oversize garage for my cars and workshop, and, because my partner is an avid gardener, some decent outdoor and gardening space. That was it.

HOUSES 130

EW Was the result of working with an architect what you expected? RC Actually, I think it was better. The builders we chose hadn’t built anything like this before and they were continually amazed by how good the detailing was as well as by how buildable everything was – which makes a big difference. I’m gobsmacked by how well the house has turned out. It’s big and warm, yet easy to cool – and everything works. EW Did you have much involvement in the progress on site when the house was being built? RC I left professional practice not long after building started, so I was on site a lot. My partner and I rented a house close by so that we could be around not only for the big milestones, but also in case other issues came up. But, as it turned out, there weren’t many. We purposefully put a lot of effort into the design development with Ian to avoid the need to be on site all the time, and as a result there were almost no changes to the design during construction. Which is also something that the builders loved.

WORKING WITH AN ARCHITECT

EW What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of using an architect? RC The best place to start is to get a sense of what you like. Use design magazines, blogs and social media to find your aesthetic and research studios that are local to you. Find an architect whose style you really like, and trust them. We took our brief down to as little as possible in order to experience Ian’s full effect. I think you will have a happier working relationship with an architect if you can avoid being too prescriptive. No architect wants to feel as if they’ve been asked simply to document an idea you’ve already decided on. EW Would you engage an architect again? RC Definitely. And I think it’s worth stressing the real benefit of engaging an architect for a renovation. Architect-designed renovations seem to be less constrained by existing floor plans because architects will make bolder, more confident interventions than owners doing their own transformations would. My last point is to stress that detailing is much harder than people think, and something best tasked to an architect.

INAX Mougins mosaic tiles. Thornton Residence by Doherty Design Studio. Photography by Derek Swalwell.

02 2

Merve Kahraman

Furniture and lighting designer Merve Kahraman explores the relationship between product and user, creating designs with a playful character.

FURNITURE AND LIGHTING DESIGN

Words by Colin Martin

Merve Kahraman experienced a personal revelation when studying molecular biology and genetics. Realizing that this was not her passion, she quit her course and headed for Milan, where she studied at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), and then to London, where she completed an Master of Arts in product design at Central Saint Martins. “My favourite teacher there was Nick Rhodes, who helped me develop a much broader vision and question why designers do what they do,” she says. She worked with product designers Tom Dixon and Tord Boontje in London, and interior designers Martin Brudnizki Design Studio and Crème Jun Aizaki Architecture and Design in New York, before establishing her own furniture, lighting and interior design practice and commuting between its ofﬁces in New York and Istanbul. Her production and logistics teams are in Istanbul, where her furniture and lighting designs are manufactured by freelance artisans, many of whom she has known for years. Interior design projects comprise about forty percent of her business and most of the contractors for these projects are based in the USA. “Lighting is always more magical for me, but I love designing all sorts of furniture, from a bar cart to a vanity desk,” Merve says. The Iris Chair exempliﬁes her skill in ringing the changes within a single design.

HOUSES 130

Inspired by the Greek goddess Iris, messenger of the gods and personiﬁcation of the rainbow, its geometric minimalism and joyful palette of coloured fabrics delight the eye. Its adjustable back is designed with comfort in mind. The Beice Sofa’s cumuluscloud-like silhouette, rounded armrests and spherical feet in American walnut hint at Art Deco, as does its upholstery in powder pink-fabric or mustard-yellow leather. Entirely handcrafted, it can be customized in different sizes and upholstery. The Cassini lighting collection is named after the historic Cassini–Huygens space mission, which explored Saturn and its moons and rings. Cassini ﬂoor lamps, chandeliers and sconces are characterized by handcrafted rattan “rings” and opaque white-glass spheres that glow like Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. In fact, the Cassini collection’s design is reminiscent of an astronomy lesson: in the chandelier version, each light source is symmetrically aligned above another, as if in orbit. Currently Merve is working on a Cassini series of coffee and side tables, as well as designing furniture for pets. “My future creative and business aspirations are to create sustainable and emotional designs,” she adds. mervekahraman.com

STUDIO

01 Designer Merve Kahraman splits her time between her studios in Istanbul and New York. 02 The Beice Sofa has the appearance of a ﬂuffy pink-hued cumulus cloud. 03 The Cassini lighting collection is named after the historic space mission that probed Saturn and its moons. 04 The Iris Chair has a joyful personality and colour palette.

Inside out

Extend living spaces into the outdoors with a selection of adobe-style lighting, nature-inspired furniture and dramatic outdoor fires.

Find more residential products: selector.com and productnews.com.au

04 02

01 Kyoto outdoor sconce Available in Australia from Spence and Lyda, LA-based Atelier de Troupe’s Kyoto outdoor sconces have softly rounded edges in sand-cast aluminium reminiscent of the adobe aesthetic of New Mexico. These handmade sculptures are resistant to the elements. spenceandlyda.com.au

03 Kilt lounge armchair Designed by Marcello Ziliani for Ethimo, the versatile Kilt dining chair becomes a comfortable lounge armchair, enhancing outdoor spaces with neutral tones that can complement a range of designs. The Kilt armchair is available with a teak or steel frame. ethimo.com/en

05 Ribbon outdoor furniture Defined by wide strips of powdercoated steel, the low-set Ribbon range of outdoor furniture from Robert Plumb comprises a sofa, armchair, fixed chaise and coffee table. The Ribbon range was designed in Australia by David Harrison of Design Daily. robertplumb.com.au

02 Elements ceramic tile collection Suitable for indoor and outdoor applications, the Elements flooring and walling tile collection is inspired by the dusty, earthy colours of nature. The range is offered in three sizes and six base colours including ‘Charcoal,’ ‘Coffee’ and ‘Taupe’ (pictured). johnsontiles.com.au

04 Outdoor channel and grates Veitch Stainless Steel offers made-to-measure, marine-grade stainless steel channels and grates that are ideal for balconies, terraces and pool decks. A selection of tile inserts provides a stylish solution for draining water in outdoor spaces. veitchstainless.com.au

06 Morsø Forno outdoor ovens and barbecues The cast-iron wood-burning Forno outdoor oven is shaped like an Italian stove. The wide, low ceiling of the firebox simplifies cleaning and produces optimal radiant heat, creating an even temperature. The Forno gas barbecue (pictured right) is the newest addition to the range. castworks.com.au

PRODUCTS

08 07

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07 Monte and Beppi deck chairs Italian-made and available with custom sling options, the Monte and Beppi deck chairs from Basil Bangs feature Forest Stewardship Council-certiﬁed European timber and outdoor grade ﬁxtures. They are sure to imbue any outdoor space with Mediterranean style. basilbangs.com

09 Banyan Tree armchair and Lotus table Kun Design’s Banyan Tree dining armchair and Lotus cafe table are inspired by nature and life, with natural forms and colours that are drawn from exotic ﬂowers and plants. The settings are designed for relaxation, conversation, dining and entertaining. domo.com.au

11 Trace furniture collection Channelling late-century nostalgia, Tait’s Trace collection was designed by Adam Goodrum and is upholstered in high-performance fabrics from Mokum, pictured here in the Reef weave in ‘Beechwood’ (lounge) and Tropicalia by Catherine Martin in ‘Gilver’ (armchair). madebytait.com.au

08 EP1350 Fire Table Nothing brings people together quite like food and ﬂames. Escea has found the perfect way to combine them with the EP1350 Fire Table. Inspired by the classic campﬁre, the outdoor Fire Table is made for gathering, sharing, cooking and marshmallow toasting. escea.com

10 Dome seating collection The Dome seating collection designed by Odo Fioravanti for Pedrali evokes the tradition of bistro chairs, with curved silhouettes and generous shapes. These stackable polypropylene chairs, armchairs and stools are ideal for creating a welcoming outdoor space. pedrali.it

12 Pure Linens country-style bricks PGH Bricks and Pavers’ new brick range, Pure Linens, comprises four sophisticated tones including ‘Pebble Creek’ (pictured). With a smooth surface texture, this range is designed to bring the essence of the countryside to urban homes. Photograph: Cathy Schusler. pghbricks.com.au

HOUSES 130

OUTDOOR PRODUCTS

Make an entrance

Blur the line between inside and out with custom curved glazing, sliding roofs, retractable screens and more. Find more residential products: selector.com and productnews.com.au

05 04

01 Custom-designed sliding roofs Providing a high level of thermal performance and ventilation, custom sliding roofs by Tilt can help to address the passive heating and cooling needs of environmentally efficient homes like this one in Redfern, Sydney, by Marra and Yeh Architects. Photograph: Alicia Taylor. tilt-industrialdesign.com

03 Timber and stone door furniture Tirar creates elegant, contemporary door furniture and fittings in a selection of natural materials including calacatta marble, American white oak, American walnut and spotted gum. The entire range can be customized with metal inlays for a unique finish. tirar.com.au

05 704R Slide Master recessed sliding door The Slide Master door has all the hallmarks of a European-inspired sliding door system with the benefits of a design tailored to Australian environments. The recessed bottom rail creates clear sightlines, as seen at KV House by Turner. Photograph: Brett Boardman. elevatealuminium.com.au

02 S4 screen and blind system The versatile S4 screen and blind system by Centor incorporates shading, privacy and pest control into a single customizable solution. The door and window screens fully retract when not in use, maximizing indoorâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;outdoor living without compromising views. centor.com

04 Custom-made curved glass Bent and Curved Glass works with architects to achieve precision-fabricated, custom-made glazing for projects of any scale, such as Whitlam Place by Freadman White and Anon Studio, providing visual impact while delivering thermal performance. Photograph: Tom Ross. bentglass.com.au

06 External venetian blinds Horisoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solar-control motorized and automated specialty venetian blinds offer dynamic facades for varied projects, such as this home by Tim Roberts Design. A wide range of slat materials, finishes and control options are available. Photograph: Roger Thompson. horiso.com.au

PRODUCTS

Winwood Mckenzie O N E T O W AT C H

Thom Mckenzie of Winwood Mckenzie formed his Melbourne-based studio after working in New York and Milan. His approach is based on an intimate understanding of the construction process and interrogating how things are built. Words by Gemma Savio

The skills required to make architecture are garnered by virtue of patience and time. This is evident in the work of Thom Mckenzie, who has spent the past eight years quietly running his Melbourne-based architecture studio, Winwood Mckenzie. Operating from a warehouse shared with furniture makers, steel workers and artists in Brunswick, Thom describes his work to date as “a gradual pursuit to really understand what is interesting” about his process and how he practises. Rather than focusing narrowly on the projects he is currently working on – a stone-clad restoration and addition to a circa 1855 home and a hotel in Indonesia, among them – or on his previous experience, which makes for an extensive resume accrued at established practices in Melbourne, New York and Milan, Thom directs greater attention to the processes behind Winwood Mckenzie’s architecture and the shared qualities that are inherent to his work as a result. “We spend a lot of time thinking about what the potential of the architect is in each project, interrogating that and working out how to design a business model and a practice model around what that is,” Thom explains. “In my eyes, this is based on having a thorough expertise in how things are built, so our method of practice is designed around being intimately involved throughout the construction process and this stems from how we document, detail and collaborate with fabricators to resolve how things are built.” The outcome of this process is an expanding portfolio of residential, public and hotel projects whose consistency is legible regardless of type. The most immediately apparent thread across these projects is the quality of the physical outcome. Winwood Mckenzie’s preoccupation with construction results in highly refined and crafted spaces. At the recently completed Brunswick House, an addition to a heritage cottage in Melbourne’s inner north, the architecture has been treated with the care and craftsmanship of furniture. This isn’t to be mistaken for furniture design, however; it is architecture executed with the same level of intimacy and tactility. Throughout the house, Winwood Mckenzie’s design process is expressed in the precision detailing where materials meet and in the crosshatched plaster ceiling. The ceiling elements, manufactured locally in Preston, were devised to use typical cornice-making techniques reinterpreted in a contemporary way. “There has to be a level of material innovation, but that

doesn’t necessarily have to be a completely new way of doing something,” says Thom. “For the ceiling at Brunswick House, we worked with the existing skills of the fabricators to add detail in a way that isn’t a replica and instead creates its own heritage character. In doing so, we’re adding another layer of history to that project.” As well as residential projects, Winwood Mckenzie’s portfolio includes a series of exhibitions for the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), created in collaboration with the NGV exhibition design team. The suite of spaces, designed to display masterworks by the likes of Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Ai Weiwei, reflect equal consideration for how architecture is produced and received. “We are trying to make each project have its own character,” says Thom. “And by doing that, we’re constantly testing out how we can use architecture to create spaces that have a personality that reflects ideas.” In the case of the NGV exhibitions, the work serves to enhance the experience of both the artefacts and the space itself, without competing. This approach to architecture as a backdrop is translated to the studio’s houses, which Thom describes as “the set for life to happen around, where the spectacle happens within the work.” He clarifies that this doesn’t mean that the space can’t be remarkable, but that it is the “synergy between the life that happens, and then how the architecture supports this, that is really interesting.” Winwood Mckenzie’s preoccupation with process makes sense in the context of Thom’s extensive involvement with the profession outside his own studio. He is the national president of the Australian Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Emerging Architects and Graduates Network, sits on the AIA National Council and National Education Committee, was a creative director of the 2019 Architeam conference and has recently been appointed to a faculty position at Monash University, running the professional practice course in the Master of Architecture program. In these endeavours, Thom is constantly interrogating how architects can have the most efficacy in delivering the best possible design outcomes and he uses these platforms as opportunities to refine his own practice. “That combination of practice, education and advocacy is a good way to get a really broad understanding of what the profession is and, ideally then, to be able to define our position quite clearly within that,” he explains. “Then we’re able to contribute our energies in a way that is purposeful.” winwoodmckenzie.com.au

WINWOOD MCKENZIE

01 Thom Mckenzie, founder of Winwood Mckenzie. 02 Brunswick House (2018) displays a degree of craftsmanship akin to furniture. Photograph: Benjamin Hosking. 03 Winwood Mckenzieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s process results in highly refined projects, such as Brunswick House. Photograph: Benjamin Hosking. 04 Winwood Mckenzie has a varied portfolio including residential and hotel projects.

HOUSES 130

ONE TO WATCH

Bookshelf 02

01 Australia Modern by Hannah Lewi and Philip Goad (Thames and Hudson, 2019) There are some stories of Australian modernism that are ingrained in the country’s psyche: there’s the story of the Sydney Opera House and the plucking of Jørn Utzon’s competitionwinning design from a bin; there’s Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin’s transformation of Australia’s distinctive landscape into a modern capital city; and, in the negative, there’s the story of The Australian Ugliness, so witheringly told by Robin Boyd in 1960. This impressive work by Hannah Lewi and Philip Goad places these pivotal stories within the broader context of a design and architecture movement that shaped modern Australia. Australia Modern features one hundred key works of modernism from 1925 to 1975, ranging from government-led hospital and public housing projects to the houses of the Small Homes Service. Featuring a wide selection of iconic and influential modernist homes, including Best Overend’s Cairo Flats (1935–36), the Harry and Penelope Seidler House at Killara (1966–67) and Ian McKay’s Lobster Bay House (1971–72), this book constitutes an admirable retelling of the story of Australian modernism.

02 Suburban Baroque by David Wadelton (M.33, 2019) In a similar vein to a number of recently published photography books, such as Warren Kirk’s Suburbia (see Houses 125), this book seeks to mythologize and celebrate a specific type of suburban Melbourne living that is slowly fading into the margins. Photographer David Wadelton, who has been documenting Melbourne’s inner-north since 1975, explains: “Lately, my attention has turned to the vanishing mid-century suburban interiors of the formerly workingclass northern areas that were the destination of choice for many post-war immigrants from Europe. The once-ubiquitous terrazzo, balustrades, marble columns and lions and other manifestations of pride and nostalgia for their homelands have become increasingly rare as the years pass, generations change, and gentrification takes place.” The photos here are humourous, poignant and beautiful. Located in suburbs from Brunswick to Sunshine, the interiors depicted range from the grand to the simple, but all tell a story. As photography historian Patrick Pound writes in an accompanying essay, “Some rooms are full, some are empty. All rooms are full of information and meaning and all of these rooms are interesting.”

03 The Breeze Block Book edited by Sam Marshall and Maitiú Ward (Uro Publications, 2019) The humble breeze block has throughout its history been both loved and loathed by architects and homeowners alike. As this engaging book details, the breeze block came of age when modernists were rejecting decoration and craftsmanship in favour of the functional. So while DIY builders and homeowners embraced them, many architects “detested” breeze blocks and their sometimes kitsch patterns. As this distinctive building block has come in and out of fashion, however, architects have come to appreciate the innate qualities of breeze blocks – particularly, their usefulness in tempering environmental conditions. The Breeze Block Book includes architectural projects from the mid-twentieth century to today that have used breeze blocks to masterful effect. Among them are Edward Durrell Stone’s 1956 Town House (New York), Iwan Iwanoff’s 1976 Marsala House (Perth) and Studio Prineas’s 2016 Breeze Block House (Sydney). Coeditor and Sydney architect Sam Marshall says he has “an obsession with breeze bocks” and their “endless possibilities and patterns”. This book should help spread that obsession.

READING

04 Courtyard Living: Contemporary Houses of the Asia-Pacific by Charmaine Chan (Thames and Hudson, 2019) A cursory flick through recent issues of Houses magazine will reveal a diverse collection of homes arranged around courtyards. This housing type is having a moment, and this book by design journalist Charmaine Chan offers a welcome snapshot of some of the best examples of courtyard living across the Asia-Pacific. Chan has personal experience with courtyards, having commissioned her own courtyard house, in Sydney, designed by Matt Elkan Architect. In this book she offers a refreshingly light and honest appraisal of the typology and its ongoing appeal. Describing Richard Kirk Architect’s Bramston Residence in Brisbane, she says that the central courtyard allows for “reciprocity, between the building and its landscape” while also saving the owners a lifetime of leaf-litter clean-up. In her review of Saigon House by a21 Studio, she explains how an internal courtyard with a “circus safety net” play area suspended above appealed first to the clients’ children, then the clients. And discussing her own home, she writes about how the “brave” move to carve out two inward-looking sanctuaries turned an otherwise simple design into “something unexpected.”

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The new granny flat SPOTLIGHT

Making a case for “right-sized” housing, three secondary dwelling designs illustrate how granny flats are being reinterpreted as site-responsive and sustainable spaces that alleviate contemporary demands on our suburbs. Words by Alysia Bennett

ERSKINEVILLE C R E AT U R E by Retallack Thompson

THE GARDEN BUNKIE by Reddog Architects

(GR)ANCILL ARY DWELLING by Crump Architects

HOUSES 130

5 7

First floor 1:400

Section 1:400

ERSKINEVILLE C R E AT U R E Architect Retallack Thompson +61 2 8097 4246 mail@retallackthompson.com retallackthompson.com

Ground floor 1:400

Project team Jemima Retallack, Mitchell Thompson Builder Zenovations Engineer Cantilever Consulting Engineers Photography Benjamin Hosking

Location Sydney, NSW Site 116 m² Floor 17 m² Design 7m Build 11 m Per m² $4,000

THE NEW GRANNY FLAT

1 Garage 2 Courtyard 3 Kitchen/ dining 4 Lounge 5 Studio 6 Kitchenette 7 Bedroom 8 Study

01 Erskineville Creature transforms an existing rear garage into a compact granny flat with carport beneath. 02 The addition of Erskineville Creature extends the capacity of the main house in response to the owner’s needs. 03 A neutral colour palette and sliding doors maximize spatial volumes.

04 The entry stairwell to Erskineville Creature adjoins the courtyard of the main dwelling.

At a time when typical nuclear families are less common than empty-nest baby boomers, single parents and those living alone, according to the 2016 Census, the suitability and affordability of the most common housing configuration in Australia – the three-bedroom detached dwelling – is diminishing. Increasingly, such smaller households are opting to live in apartments to reduce housing-related costs. But what happens when adult children can’t afford to live alone, a parent requiring care becomes widowed, or a newly wed couple start a family of their own? A possible solution is choosing “right-sized” housing. Unlike downsizing, right-sized housing is of a scale and cost that will suit the needs and circumstances of the household over time. One way to create a right-sized home is by constructing a new adaptable dwelling. An alternative is to increase the capacity of an existing property through renovations, extensions, or by adding a granny flat. Common in backyards around Australia, granny flats have transformed from a place to house war-widowed mothers to highly functional and site-responsive secondary dwellings that are helping to meet our changing housing needs. Three recent Australian projects cleverly demonstrate the potential of the granny flat model for modern families: Erskineville Creature in Sydney by Retallak Thompson, The Garden Bunkie in Brisbane by Reddog Architects, and (Gr)ancillary Dwelling in Hobart by Crump Architects, all completed in 2018. Erskineville Creature was commissioned by the owner of a Victorian terrace who sought to add a study, undertake home improvements and accommodate the shifting spatial needs of her young adult children. Rather than add a third level to the terrace, which would overshadow the small courtyard and

HOUSES 130

SPOTLIGHT

05 The deck and sandstone landscaping of the Garden Bunkie extends the living spaces, offering a flexible platform for outdoor gathering.

neighbouring plots and involve costly yet largely invisible alterations, the architects added a detached ancillary dwelling. By replacing an existing substandard garage off a rear laneway with a small granny flat over a semi-enclosed carport, and reconfiguring the internal functions of the main dwelling, the initial brief was met and additional outcomes achieved, such as improving the quality of the existing courtyard and its relationship to the main dwelling. Similarly, Reddog Architects replaced a dilapidated gazebo with a new backyard dwelling in a way that activated the underused “great abyss” of the backyard on a suburban Brisbane ten-by-forty-metre block. The Garden Bunkie, named after the Canadian granny flat typology that the expat client sought to replicate, provides extra space that can be transformed into a guest house for visiting relatives or short-stay leasing. The brief for (Gr)ancillary Dwelling was also driven by the needs of a multi-generational family whose grandmother had moved in with her children and grandkids. The existing dwelling, a prominent ten-year-old modernist glass box perched on the side of Mount Nelson in the Hobart suburb of Dynnyrne, was preserved, while an existing detached carport was converted into a three-level granny flat. Located at the front of the block, the granny flat has a presence on, and direct access to, the street. While small, independent houses can be added to the plots of existing dwellings via strata titling or subdivision, the critical distinction of the granny flat typology is its engagement with an existing house and consequently its ability to give a larger or multi-generation family opportunities for both communal and independent living. In all three projects, the ancillary nature is further emphasized by keeping the provision of kitchen amenities to a bare minimum and the laundry in the main dwelling. For Erskineville Creature, the shifting of the access stairway from the laneway

06 Simple but elegant interiors frame views of the surrounding tropical garden. 07 Layers of screens provide for varying degrees of privacy, while opening the Garden Bunkie to the temperate Brisbane climate.

THE GARDEN BUNKIE Architect Reddog Architects +61 7 3252 8912 email@reddogarchitects.com reddogarchitects.com

Project team Paul Worroll, Brodie Fernance Builder Charles Warren Constructions Engineer Bligh Tanner Photographer Christopher Frederick Jones

Location Brisbane, Qld Site 405 m² Floor 27 m² Design 6m Build 6m Per m² $2,750

THE NEW GRANNY FLAT

1 Deck 2 Fire pit 3 Multipurpose living 4 Day bed 5 Kitchenette

3 4

2 5

Section 1:400

HOUSES 130

Floor plan 1:400

SPOTLIGHT

3 2

1 5

Section 1:400

(GR)ANCILL ARY DWELLING Architect Crump Architects +61 4 1986 2639 nathan@crumparchitects.com.au crumparchitects.com.au

1 2 3 4 5

Carport Kitchen/living Bedroom Balcony Existing dwelling

Project team Nathan Crump, Ryan Cawthorn, Paul Kaiser Builder Elevate Building Tasmania Engineer JSA Consulting Engineers Lighting Casa Mondé Photographer Matt Sansom

Location Hobart, Tas

Site 2,292 m² Floor 81 m² Design 4 m Build 8m

THE NEW GRANNY FLAT

edge and along the side of the property boundary to the courtyard behind makes the flat feel like a wing of the main dwelling. Similarly, The Garden Bunkie opens onto the shared backyard and its deck and sandstone landscaping provide new opportunities for outdoor living for the whole family. The (Gr)ancillary Dwelling takes a slightly different approach by distributing spaces vertically, enabling them to be physically connected while visually disconnected, and allowing the family to come together yet live independently. These projects also demonstrate that through strategic site design, an addition can operate as an autonomous dwelling with discrete access from the street. This separation of spaces allows homeowners to sublease the flat or use it for shortterm rental accommodation to assist with costs such as mortgage payments. Right-sized housingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to accommodate multiple independent households can also make a great contribution to addressing the shortage of diverse and affordable housing in established suburbs close to public transport, hospitals and schools. But investing in design advice and using high-quality finishes is key. When designed poorly, infill housing (such as the granny flat) can result in the reduction of established tree canopies, impact the quality of private outdoor space and have negative consequences related to privacy, noise and traffic congestion for neighbours. Through considered, site-responsive design, the granny flat can provide a means to transform Australian suburbs through more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable housing.

HOUSES 130

08 (Gr)ancillary Dwelling converts an existing detached garage into a threelevel structure that opens to the street. 09 Visually isolated from the main house, (Gr)ancillary Dwelling can function as either a separate flat or as an adjunct to the primary residence.

SPOTLIGHT

WHITE HOUSE BY ROBSON RAK

HOUSES 130

This crisp addition to a Federation home exuberantly manoeuvres light, space and monochrome materials to masterfully meet the brief.

Words by Ella Leoncio Photography by Shannon McGrath

The client’s brief for White House was to convert an existing heritage house into an open, light-filled home. To take on this task, they gravitated toward the classic architecture of Robson Rak. Although the practice’s projects typically value restraint over excess, the clients’ request for an all-white palette asked the architects to take this approach a step further. Here, the texture and material typically seen in Robson Rak’s work takes a back seat. With the exception of whitewashed oak linings and sparing touches of marble, the finishes are generally white, with very little colour variation. Between the powdercoated steel, porcelain floor and white render, the palette largely sits in a narrow spectrum between pure white and off-white. Throughout the house, the detailing is important, ensuring crisp, clean edges and uninterrupted expanses of monochrome, but materiality and texture are less of a focus. Instead, the design response shifts its energy toward volume and light. The design also carefully considers view lines, intentionally choreographing what is seen and unseen as you move through the house. The partially retained original house is a double-fronted Californian Federation mix. The front four rooms have been retained, ensuring the new addition is set back significantly and almost invisible from the street. The concealed nature of the renovation amplifies the moment of surprise when

WHITE HOUSE

3 Melbourne, Vic

Alteration + addition

Family

2 +1 powder room

you first open the front door. A new courtyard has been inserted into the centre of the plan, aligning with the axis of the door. It transforms the previously dark and enclosed entry space into an unexpected moment of daylight and green outlook. The rest of the plan radiates outward from the central courtyard, which is the threshold that connects the three main arms of the house: the original front portion, the new open living space at the rear and the new first floor above. While it is the connection point, the courtyard, which envelops a white spiral stair, also separates and partially screens the three arms of the house from one another. The courtyard filters the view of the living space from the entry. There are glimpses of something beyond through the foliage but it’s not until you dogleg around the courtyard that the expansive volume of the new living space is fully revealed. A dramatic double-height dining space with floor-to-ceiling windows is remarkably bright and open. The living space, flanked by both the backyard and the courtyard, has access to two aspects of natural light and green outlook. The all-white palette exaggerates the openness of this space. An exposed steel structure extends from the rear facade out to the external terrace, creating a skeleton that defines an outdoor room. Abutting the pool, this space operates as both part of the house (the fully opening pivot doors of the living room can open up and claim the space as its own) and part of the garden. These visually connected spaces create a dynamic social environment, supporting the way the owners like to live. Upstairs in the children’s zone, the rooms are organized along a hallway that is anchored by natural light at both ends. At one end, the courtyard windows offer long-range views of the neighbouring rooftops. The other end hovers above the double-height void of the living space, with clear view lines across to the floor-to-ceiling windows at its terminating point. The balustrade effectively screens views between the ground and first-floor activity, ensuring privacy for the bedrooms above despite the openness between floors. Again, the external exposed steel structure leads the eye to the outdoors, perhaps more dramatically here as a result of the converging one-point-perspective lines at the end of the narrow hallway. This view invites the outdoor space to be part of daily life upstairs, too. In adhering to the brief to create an all-white house, Robson Rak has focused its efforts on dramatic volumes, daylight and considered view lines. Organizing the spaces of this house to both capture and exclude views, it has capitalized on favourable outlooks, filtered views that pique curiosity, excluded views to protect privacy and encouraged visual connections in the social spaces. By pairing these controlled view lines with high ceilings, generous glazing and a predominantly white palette, the bright and airy nature of the house has no doubt expanded on the clients’ vision for their home.

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

Site Floor

510 m² 275 m²

Design 6 m Build 1 y

Per m² $3,500

Products Roofing: Lysaght Klip-lok in Colorbond ‘Surfmist’ Windows and doors: Windows on the World custom steel windows in Dulux ‘Mannex White’ powdercoat finish Flooring: Woodcut oak floorboards in ‘Voss’; Terratinta Ceramiche Stonedesign tiles in ‘Chalk’ from Urban Edge Ceramics Lighting: Forestier Papillon pendant from Ke-zu; Flos Architectural UT Spot surface mounted light from Euroluce; Artemide Boalum light Kitchen: Silestone benchtops in ‘Yukon Blanco’; 2pac joinery in Dulux ‘Grey Pebble’; Miele appliances; Astra Walker Icon tapware Bathroom: Artedomus Elba Stone vanity; Astra Walker Icon tapware Other: Nau Molloy chair by Adam Goodrum from Cult; B&B Italia Tufty-Time sofa by Patricia Urquiola from Space; Objekto Paulistano armchair by Paulo Mendes Da Rocha from Hub; Lapalma Continuum stools from ECC Lighting and Furniture; sculpture by Sean Meilak from Niagara Galleries; Totem sculptures by Jo Wilson

01 A steel frame extends the geometry of the house, mediating between living space and garden terrace. Artwork: Petrina Hicks.

2 14

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1 3

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WHITE HOUSE

Entry Bedroom Sitting room Robe Study Laundry Kitchen Living Dining Terrace Pool Workshop/ plant room 13 Garage 14 Roof store 15 Attic living

02 Nestled between the backyard and the courtyard, the whitehued volume of the central living room glows luminous with natural light. Artwork: Valerie Sparks. 03 Floor-to-ceiling glass walls provide constant access to the changing conditions of the sky. 04 Clean lines and subtle textures characterize the bathroom interiors, ushering in a sense of calm.

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

05 A central courtyard, open to the sky, both connects and separates the houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tripartite layout. 06 A glass-enclosed spiral stair forms the heart of the plan from which the main rooms unfurl.

Architect Robson Rak +61 3 9079 1860 studio@robsonrak.com.au robsonrak.com.au

WHITE HOUSE

Project team Kathryn Robson, Chris Rak Builder 360 Construction Group Engineer Meyer Consulting Landscaping: Kate Patterson Landscapes Styling Swee Lim

THE SPIRIT OF PROJECT

RIMADESIO.COM

STRIPE SLIDING PANELS, ZENIT WALK-IN CLOSET, PLANET COFFEE-TABLES DESIGN G.BAVUSO

PURE INTERIORS 1D DANKS STREET WATERLOO NSW 2017, SYDNEY TEL +61 02 8021 2559 INFO@PUREINTERIORS.COM.AU

V I K K Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S P LAC E BY C UR IOUS P RACT I C E

HOUSES 130

In responding to the client’s need for a home that caters to a unique family structure, the architects have achieved a fluid and unfussy home that acts as a refuge in more ways than one. Words by Beth George Photography by Katherine Lu

On one hand, Vikki’s Place is a delightful and humble residence, full of light and air, and remarkably flexible. On the other, it is a prototype, an exemplar of the resilience that more architecture will have to take on in the era of climate change. Located on flood-prone-land in the coastal city of Newcastle, this house can withstand a 1.6-metre inundation. This project answers to a brief much larger than the client’s. Recently, I heard Curious Practice’s Warren Haasnoot and Greg Lee talk about their growing body of work. They showed a raft of careful, intelligent and elegant projects; not only is their practice young, it is prolific. But one project made me sit up in my chair for a number of reasons – and that was Vikki’s Place. A few observations about this house lingered: its openness, its frank materiality and its floodable ground floor. Later, visiting the house with Warren, I felt a sense of mutual respect between architects, client and builder. The suitability of Vikki’s brief to Curious Practice’s interests made for a great collaboration – Warren and Greg were clearly engaged by Vikki’s need for spaces catering to a unique and dynamic family structure. With children and grandchildren coming and going, she required a “main house” and a studio together, balancing privacy with supervision, and aspiration with affordability. The house is, it seems, an extension of Vikki’s personality. When describing her home she says it’s, “earthy and grounded. I like to feel the earth and I like things to be real. What you see is what you get. It’s not covering anything up, is it? Everything is exposed.” Vikki called for transparency, which is present through light and pervasive views. On the upper level, a timber skin traces the perimeter of the building envelope, defining a room that is open to the sky. Part terrace, part stair, part courtyard, it gives the house, which fronts it with operable glazing, a wonderful airiness. It creates privacy and sun protection while also giving a sense of height. This transparency exists also in the directness of the architecture. The house is composed of nothing but the most ready materials, carefully applied and left unfinished. The lower level is made of concrete block and

VIKKI’S PLACE

1 Newcastle, NSW

New house

2 + studio

houses the entry court, a car port and a laundry. With floors made of slabs and pavers, and gardens at each end, these floodable rooms can happily act as workshops or social space. The upper levels are lightweight, clad externally in corrugated sheeting and internally in plywood. These workaday materials are used in a considered manner and details in their application bring rhythm into the composition of the rooms. The blockwork walls have alternating courses, turned headers and a flourish of staggered units over the entry gate. The plywood panels inside are arranged vertically, establishing a dado height that connects with glazing lintels in a horizontal datum. Fibre cement sheets are substituted for ply to provide variation and utility or framing is left unclad to create niches for artwork. Door tracks are exposed and lengths of plumbing copper make their way plainly between standard brass garden taps, with cunning wall fixings designed to disappear. There are no doors on the kitchen cabinets and the bathrooms have wall-hung basins with minimal cabinetwork. Many details were sketched on site, with the builder and tradespeople closely engaged. The layout is equally unfussy. Vikki has travelled extensively throughout South and South-East Asia and admires the way families there live together. Curious Practice responded with a layout that is fluid and adaptable, that provides separable private space for respite and work, and a living space with tiers that can accommodate an additional bed for visitors or act as a dining banquette. The bedrooms in the main house open directly onto the living space. They are offset by a level change, creating platforms that have a bunk-like quality. There is some resonance with a holiday house in these features and in the breeziness of the layout. Architectural games lay in wait for the little ones – blocks pulled out here and there to clamber up, beams extended overlength beyond the entry stair to climb. The architects reflect that the same council requirement that threatened the house with a total separation from the ground plane resulted in much of its intrigue: its airy undercroft, its sectional resolution into terraces and elevated sleeping platforms, and a material change between ground and upper levels that echoes the grain of the street and gives it a sense of belonging. After the architects’ talk, I was haunted by their drawing of the house’s upper floor depicted as an island above floodwater; of the neighbouring house, only its eaves protrude. In this era of sea-level rise and extreme weather events, such situations will likely be the reality. Until other new builds begin to contribute to an archipelago, Vikki’s Place appears as a refuge. It has struck me since that this house is not just environmentally resilient; its physical flexibility means it can be adapted in numerous ways, over generations. Further, creating a buildable project in direct economic competition with the status quo demonstrates a professional resilience on the part of the architect. In this way, the house constitutes something of a future survival guide – a design handbook for the suburbs.

HOUSES 130

NEW HOUSE

2 Site Floor

245 m² 105 m²

Design 6 m Build 6 m

Per m² $2,700

Products Roofing: Lysaght Klip-lok in Zincalume External walls: Austral Masonry GB Smooth in ‘Porcelain’; Lysaght Mini Orb in Zincalume Internal walls: Carter Holt Harvey Ecoply; CSR compressed fibre cement sheeting Windows: AWS Vantage anodized aluminium windows Doors: Custom timber door frames by builder; Madinoz doorhandles Flooring: Carter Holt Harvey Ecoply; Lysaght Bondek suspended decking and suspended concrete slab Lighting: About Space Stay Drop Pendant lights Kitchen: Smeg oven; Fisher and Paykel fridge; custom brass and copper tapware by Maxcore Plumbing Bathroom: Caroma Luna semirecessed basin; Caroma Urbane bath; Brodware shower rose; custom brass and copper tapware by Maxcore Plumbing Heating: Pacific Energy Mirage freestanding gas stove External elements: Spotted gum timber screens Other: Custom joinery by Built by Eli

01 In the upper bedroom and living space, tiers and platforms can be used as additional beds or as seating. Artwork: Loribelle Spirovski.

02 Workaday materials are carefully detailed to provide utility and create hard-wearing, unpretentious spaces. 03 Fluid and adaptable, the layout is resonant of the “breeziness”of a holiday house. Artwork: Loribelle Spirovski. 04 Plywood is used in a considered manner, providing rhythm and composition to each of the rooms.

VIKKI’S PLACE

7 5

4 2

Ground floor 1:400

HOUSES 130

1 2 3 4

ENTRY COURT GARAGE UNDERFLOOR STORAGE LAUNDRY

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Entry court Garage Storage Laundry Deck Kitchen Dining Living Bedroom Studio

First floor 1:400

NEW HOUSE

The house is composed of nothing but the most ready materials, carefully applied and left unfinished.

VIKKIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S PLACE

05 Blockwork walls play “architectural games,” with blocks pulled out for little ones to clamber up. 06 The home is an extension of the owner’s personality – she describes it as “earthy and grounded.” 07 Located on flood-prone land, the house is designed to withstand a 1.6-metre flood.

HOUSES 130

Architect Curious Practice +61 412 086 882 mail@curiouspractice.com curiouspractice.com

NEW HOUSE

Project team Warren Haasnoot, Greg Lee, James Ellis, Chris Bourke, Nina Mocke, Angus Vinden Builder Built by Eli Engineer Skelton Consulting Engineers

ALBERT VILLA BY B U R E AU PROBERTS

HOUSES 130

Responding to its heritage context and inner-Brisbane neighbourhood, this addition to a historic weatherboard cottage captures vistas from new living spaces arranged around a landscaped courtyard.

Words by Michelle Bailey Photography by Alicia Taylor

Brisbane’s vernacular traditions are a source of inexhaustible enquiry for contemporary architects. For Terry McQuillan, director of Brisbane practice Bureau Proberts, unpicking and re-packing the worker’s cottage architectural type to make a contemporary home for himself and his wife Charlie has been an irresistible challenge, twice taken up. This second iteration began as a speculative proposal following the completion of the couple’s Wooloowin House project; once the pair observed the latent potential of Albert Villa, sited on 235 square metres with three street frontages in the inner-city enclave of Petrie Terrace, they agreed to upgrade. Albert Villa was constructed in 1885 by Peter Albert and is included in Rod Fisher’s 1988 local survey of historic houses, Petrie-Terrace Brisbane 1858–1988, in which it’s described as “a four-roomed core beneath a pyramidshaped roof clad in corrugated iron.” Additional elements include, “double French doors leading onto a side verandah [and] a neat little kitchen house attached lengthwise to the back side.” The entry praises the house as “somewhat superior to run-of-the-mill worker’s houses in the 1880s.” Supplementary curios, added incrementally over the course of its 130-year lifespan, had by turns improved and diminished the original. Terry and Charlie retained some of these additions, such as the reclaimed wrought-iron verandah balustrades, chimney and fireplace extensions and the pressed-metal ceilings. Others were carefully excised, among these the bathroom enclosure on the front verandah and the postwar sunroom. With the realization that small and imperceptible moves would not fulfil the potential of the site, came plans for large-scale landscape and architectural interventions aimed at engaging with views and the garden while honouring the tripartite arrangement of the historic cottage. As muse, Albert Villa offered lessons in scale, proportion and materiality. The building’s pyramid top, verandah-wrapped centre and grounded under-storey set the parameters for the expression of new additions. The

ALBERT VILLA

2 Brisbane, Qld

Alteration + addition

Couple

responsible strategy adopted was to subvert the height of the rear extension, giving primacy to the original cottage while echoing its metal roof, weatherboard skin and stone base. The eastern elevation reads as a two-dimensional version of the familiar cottage silhouette, with the new roof folding away from the flat timber facade, wrapping up and over new additions. Within this roof space a bedroom chamber is neatly packed, while below, new social spaces engage in a dialogue with the street in an enclosed-verandah scenario. The extreme topography of the site also shaped the architectural response. The almost six-metre fall from front verandah on the northern boundary to the rear laneway to the south permitted the trickiest of moves – the introduction of a double car garage to the site – to be achieved with minimal interruption to the whole. Capping the garage, a deep concrete slab established a new elevated terrain, the critical element required to ground the contemporary cottage and fulfil the architectural obligation to incoporate landscape on the site. The new ground floor of the extension connects by means of a halfheight staircase from the central corridor of the original cottage. Where the old sunroom was demolished a rainforest fernery takes seed, rising up from natural ground a storey below. From a narrow breezeway wedged between old and new, contemporary living and dining spaces open out, with built-in and loose furniture arranged atop a timber plinth. Beyond, a lush carpet of green unfurls, courtesy of delicate dichondra groundcover contained by black fence-like walls. The subtle elevation of the oak floor serves to visually obscure sunken door tracks and strengthen the immersive quality of the garden surrounds. Pushed hard against the eastern boundary, the kitchen is laid out on stone. The outdoor quality of this room is intensified by this floor treatment combined with a louvred wall that harnesses breeze and stacking doors that allow for a fluid garden connection. From the island bench a tremendous view is framed, looking west toward Mt Coot-tha and the wider Taylor Range. As the ink-black surfaces of the building recede, the chromatic brilliance of nature escalates and visual connections are drawn between the verdant garden foreground and the variegated greens resonating across hillsides and mountainous landscapes beyond frame. At this precise moment, architecture surrenders its power to the greater forces of nature. With domestic-scale manoeuvres, Albert Villa navigates city-scale strategies to protect heritage, enliven streets, frame views and leverage a benign climate. With a commitment to landscape, the architecture reinvigorates the role of the backyard, elevating it both physically and ideologically. The scheme supports the delightful notion that contemporary rooms can entertain infinite degrees of enclosure and conversely that backyards can exist in infinite varieties of containment. For three decades Bureau Proberts has committed to honouring its “Queensland roots.” At the compellingly domestic Albert Villa, the practice’s subtropical-living dialogue deepens.

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

3 Site Floor

235 m² 386 m²

Design 1 y Build 1 y

Per m² $2,800

Products Roofing: VM Zinc Anthra-Zinc; Lysaght Trim-dek in Colorbond ‘Monument’ External walls: Painted pine chamfer board in Dulux ‘Black Spur’; Lysaght custom folded metal cladding in Colorbond ‘Monument’ Windows: Aneeta 2 Pane sashless windows; Breezway timber louvres painted in Dulux ‘Black Spur’ Flooring: Tongue n Groove timber flooring in ‘Graupa’; Eco Outdoor Porphyry stone paving; Boral Exposé exposed aggregate concrete in ‘Black Night’ Kitchen: Baumatic Oven; Electrolux cooktop; Everdure rangehood; Fisher and Paykel dishwasher; Abey tapware; Maximum Venus porcelain benchtop from Artedomus; NAV veneer joinery Bathroom: Basins and toilet from Rogerseller; tapware and fittings from ABI Heating and cooling: Jetmaster fireplaces

01 The new living and kitchen spaces are connected to the existing cottage by a half-height staircase that leads from the original hallway.

4 6

6 1 5 7

Ground floor 1:400

First floor 1:400

Second floor 1:400

ALBERT VILLA

1 Garage 2 Courtyard 3 Laundry/ bath 4 Undercroft 5 Bedroom 6 Living/dining 7 Courtyard 8 Kitchen 0

02 A stone-floored kitchen with large stacking doors encourages a fluid dialogue between inside and out.

03 Inky black metal cladding combined with painted white weatherboard makes for an eclectic yet unified palette. 04 What was once described as “superior to a run-of-the-mill” worker’s cottage has been updated and enhanced.

Section 1:400

Architect Bureau Proberts +61 7 3221 0672 mail@bureauproberts.com.au bureauproberts.com.au

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

Project team Terry McQuillan, Charlie McQuillan Builder and engineer Craft Building Company Landscaping RPS Group Heritage consultant Vault Heritage Consulting

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Kitchen: Downie North Architects Photography: Felipe Neves

04 03

A Design Studio

After years developing his expertise in architectural lighting, designer Alex Fitzpatrick now channels his fascination for the scientiﬁc and poetic aspects of light into his own collection of decorative ﬁxtures and objects.

LIGHTING DESIGN

Words by Rebecca Gross

Alex Fitzpatrick, founder of A Design Studio, is fascinated by the scientific and poetic aspects of light – the technical details of a lighting fixture and the ambient effects of the diffused light. “I try to capture light within a material without the light source being visible,” he explains. “It’s about how the light is cast and the effect it creates. The process and product are part of it but not my underlying goal.” Graduating from university with a degree in industrial design, Alex worked at lighting companies in Canada and Australia, developing expertise in commercial projects, architectural lighting and custom fittings. He also designed a line of decorative LED fittings on the side and in 2015 went out on his own. Using single integrated LED chips concealed within traditional materials such as metal and glass, Alex transforms space with his lights. Inspired by the sun’s rays filtering through a forest canopy, Alex designed his first fitting, Light Garden, in 2011. The triangular modules have petal-like forms and can be configured in abstract and organic compositions so that light pierces through the gaps and casts patterns of light and shadow on the wall. Alex has evolved Light Garden with larger modules and different materials, including a limited-edition series in alabaster stone for

HOUSES 130

which he received a Maison & Objet Rising Talent Award in 2017. Continuing to explore the interplay between light and materials, Alex started designing with glass. He collaborated with Sydney-based glass artist BenEdols to test techniques whereby the lampshade could be illuminated by a hidden light source.The result is Eon, a collection of pendants with crackle glass shades. Alex used a combination of materials for his Greenway pendant, which is inspired by Macquarie Lighthouse in Vaucluse. Named for architect Francis Greenway, the pendant stacks glass, metal and 3D-printed plastic in a form that references the architecture of the lighthouse and emits light in different ways. “The perforated lattice helps distribute the light, slots in the metal kick light upwards and the glass captures the light within its edge,” Alex describes. Working with architects and designers, Alex customizes and further develops his light ﬁttings for residential, hospitality and commercial projects. He has also created a line of Crackle Vases, in clear and milky alabaster for his own brand and in richly coloured glass for his partnership with Lane Crawford. adesignstudio.com.au

STUDIO

01 Alex Fitzpatrick, lighting designer and founder of A Design Studio. 02 Light Garden, Alex’s first light fitting, is inspired by the sun’s rays filtering through a forest canopy. 03 The Greenway Pendant references the architecture of Australia’s oldest lighthouse. 04 The Crackle Vases collection is a line of clear and milky glass vessels that appear as if they are fractured.

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Rob Kennon Architects IN PROFILE

The consistent body of work by Rob Kennon Architects is bolstered by the belief that the people they design for and other collaborators are the most interesting impetus for architecture. Words by Marcus Baumgart Photography by Derek Swalwell

HOUSES 130

site-grounded standpoint. The Bluff House in Flinders, Victoria is a case in point. The client for this project put forward a particular design aesthetic early in the process, and for Rob and his team, understanding yet also challenging that sensibility was central to the development of the design. The final aesthetic of the house is the result of a meeting of client and architect in accord. Occupying a challenging site that Rob describes as “incredible,” the house is located along a geological faultline that cannot be built on. Consequently, a solid reinforced-block base has been buried three-quarters of its depth into the ground on one side of the faultline, anchoring the structure and allowing the lightweight upper level to cantilever and maximize ocean views. Consistent with many of the practice’s projects, the Bluff House plan is tightly formed and reductive, yet the whole never aspires to minimalism. Plentiful storage allows living spaces to be visually uncluttered and unencumbered, which in turn places the weather and the view front and centre in the experience of the house, much to the client’s ongoing satisfaction.

“It’s all about people.” Rob Kennon is resolute when we meet, rapidly diverting the focus of our conversation away from the brief and from architecture itself and firmly onto the people who commission, build and inhabit the homes he designs. In twenty years of interviews I have never heard this idea expressed quite so emphatically, although many architects nod in its general direction, often half-heartedly, as if they merely sense that they should. Rob, however, is speaking from a different place. He freely admits that he finds the people involved in his projects – the clients, yes, but also the builders – far more interesting than the brief or even the site, regardless of how important those other things may be (and he agrees that they are, the site in particular). In fact, Rob takes it even further, stating that “there is a great benefit in realizing that your architecture is not the most important thing.” He goes on to say that a “deep understanding of client and site” is the most crucial tasks of the architect. These are refreshing sentiments, expressed with conviction, and they allow us to consider the work of Rob Kennon Architects from a particularly people-focused,

Bluff House section 1:400

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4 10 14 11 1

5 2

Bluff House ground floor 1:400

ROB KENNON ARCHITECTS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Entry Garage Pool Verandah Bedroom Robe Pantry Kitchen Dining Living Study Store Laundry Rumpus

Bluff House basement 1:400

01 Rob Kennon, director of Rob Kennon Architects, takes a “people-focused” approach to design. 02 Bluff House (2018) is poised over a geological faultline near the Victorian coast. 03 At Bluff House, visually clean spaces direct attention outward to the area’s expansive views.

HOUSES 130

IN PROFILE

04 Goulburn Valley House (2016) is a working farmhouse designed around a sheltered courtyard. 05 Goulburn Valley House is heated by a slow-combustion fireplace at the heart of the plan. 06 The flow of spaces at Goulburn Valley House reflects the individual and collective movements of its inhabitants.

ROB KENNON ARCHITECTS

A close creative relationship was established with the builder of Bluff House, further exemplifying the importance of people to the work of Rob Kennon Architects. The highly skilled hand-fabrication knowledge of Ross Stapleton of On the Rise Construction proved key and Ross built much of the house himself by hand, from the hooks and handles to the joinery. Goulburn Valley House, a working farmhouse located on a floodplain in northern Victoria, challenged Rob and his team in different ways. From the flat, undifferentiated landscape to the flies and the robust elements of a working farm, this project demanded a detailed understanding not just of logistics and farm life, which Rob knows from his own upbringing, but also of how this family operates on the site, on the ground and, indeed, “in the round,” as Rob puts it. Fundamentally organized around a courtyard in an attempt to “turn the house around itself,” Goulburn Valley House is all about the circularity of social movement between members of the family, who spend time alternately together and apart. As with many of Rob Kennon Architects’ houses, this is not an open-plan house, but rather one in which a series of rooms are positioned around the organizing motif of the courtyard, hunkering down beneath a sheltering, unifying roof. Environmentally, the house has a high internal thermal mass and is ideally oriented, while at the heart of the plan is a slow-combustion fireplace that runs all winter and provides the heating for the house. The result is a house based on a detailed understanding of the dynamics of this particular family and the demands of their farming life on this particular site.

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The Goulburn Valley House is all about the circularity of social movement between members of the family, who spend time alternately together and apart.

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Entry Kitchen Dining Living Study Bedroom Robe Laundry Courtyard Store Carport

IN PROFILE

An early work, the Datum House in Abbotsford was created for an immigrant family with young children newly arrived in Melbourne from the United Kingdom. Once again, understanding the dynamics of the family was fundamental to the formulation of the design, in which the plan is organized to create moments of togetherness and moments of respite for the parents. This house, too, is not open plan, but is rather formed around social nuances, with the architecture manipulating volume and light to create moments of strategic separation and connection between rooms. Datum House, is so-called because the resolution of the form is marked by a horizontal datum expressed both internally and externally by a change in materiality and finish. As an example of a skilful renovation in a heavily built-up inner-city suburb and on a constrained site, Datum House is ample evidence that Rob Kennon Architectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; approach is not reliant on rural settings or sweeping ocean vistas. To draw a further contrast between earlier works, Burnley House is the reworking of a three-level townhouse in order to accommodate a hypothetical family on a small footprint in a highly constrained inner-urban context.

07 Light and materiality define the flow of spaces â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including the bathroom â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the Datum House (2015). 08 The kitchen and dining areas of Datum House encourage collective activities within the family unit. 09 Set in an innerMelbourne suburb, Datum House responds to the dynamic interactions of a young urban family.

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Entry Bedroom Laundry Kitchen Dining Living Deck Backyard Studio

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ROB KENNON ARCHITECTS

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IN PROFILE

10 Unfolding over three floors, individual rooms at Burnley House (2015) are connected to each other by flights of stairs. 11 At Burnley House, dark ceilings contrast against light-toned walls, inverting the typical colour hierarchy of apartment interiors. 12 Within Burnley House fibre-cement sheet wall linings evoke an atmosphere of elegant restraint.

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Entry Garage Laundry Bedroom Living Study Robe Kitchen Dining Deck

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Primarily an interiors project, Burnley House is differentiated from the other works discussed here in that the client was imagined as a type rather than engaged directly. Even with a client in absentia, the understanding of people and how they live and occupy a home was essential to the development of the design. In common with the other examples from Rob Kennon Architects’ oeuvre, this house relies on the careful articulation of individual rooms, using the stair connecting all levels as a device for both division and unification. Counterintuitive moves, such as the use of dark ceilings in compact spaces and the selection of fibre-cement sheets for internal wall cladding, give the architecture a unique quality, with the composure and restraint of minimalism yet a material richness that belies that reductive descriptor. Rob Kennon Architects is a studio always striving to “make it better,” and where “it has to be right,” according to Rob. With these sentiments as guiding aspirations, the practice creates architecture that is based on a deep understanding of the people involved in creating and occupying it. This is a remarkably robust and flexible approach and it will be exciting to see where this careful operator and his team take their work next. robkennon.com

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IN PROFILE

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Page Street by Clare Cousins Architects FIRST HOUSE

Clad in pleated copper, this addition to a Federation-era house was the first â&#x20AC;&#x153;realâ&#x20AC;? commission for architect Clare Cousins, who reflects on how projects like this one went on to become a staple for the practice. Words by Clare Cousins Photography by Shannon McGrath

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Our response to their brief, the compressed context and the surrounding laneway fences of corrugated steel was to skin the new addition in pleated copper.

Starting my practice was a leap of faith. For many architects, the impetus to go it alone comes from a significant commission, but this wasn’t the case for me. I didn’t have one great project tempting me to start my own practice, but rather the odd kitchen and bathroom renovation for friends of friends. I don’t remember the moment I decided to establish Clare Cousins Architects, but I do remember always feeling sure that I would. Starting a practice in 2005 was vastly different from doing so today. The fax machine was a key business tool and social media was in its infancy. Back then, by the time a house was built, photographed and published in a magazine, it was often three to four years before a completed project won you subsequent commissions. At the time, I didn’t have any architect friends practicing for themselves, which made for a rather isolating experience. How times have changed – I’m privileged to be part of a wonderfully collegiate community of architects, not just in my hometown but aslo Australia-wide, thanks to platforms like Instagram that keep us in touch with each other’s work. For the first few years, all of our work came from word of mouth. You could never predict where the next call would come from. This was no different for our first “real” commission. Our client had been a trade representative who used to call in at Wood Marsh Architecture, where I had previously worked. She had heard that I had gone out on my own and was looking for an architect to renovate a period house on a tight, inner-suburban site, the type of project that was to become our staple for the next ten years. Located on the corner of a bluestone-cobbled lane, the Federation-era house was to be the home for the client’s future family. In the brief, they noted their love of weathered steel cladding, like that used in Wood Marsh’s Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) building in Melbourne’s Southbank. Our response to the brief, the

01 The addition’s pleated copper facade complements the tones of the existing red brick Federation house. 02 The junction between old and new is readily experienced and legible. 03 The living spaces in the new structure are located where there are better opportunities for exapansive glazing.

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04 The cladding is extended below the soffit to enable the pleated copper skirt to be experienced inside the home.

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FIRST HOUSE

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05 A room in the original house adjacent to the new kitchen serves as a formal dining room, which suits the clients’ needs.

compressed context and the surrounding laneway fences of corrugated steel was to skin the new addition in pleated copper. The copper would patina over time and complement the tones of the red brick Federation house, while offering a more delicate finish than that of weathered steel. I’m drawn to corner sites where the junction between old and new can be more readily experienced and legible. In these projects, the passer-by often benefits from the exterior composition more than the homeowner, for whom the interior is the primary experience. For this reason, we extended the copper cladding below the ground-floor soffit to enable an internal experience of the pleated skirt that frames the courtyard garden outlook. As in many of our projects, the living spaces in the new structure are located where there are better opportunities for expansive glazed connections that draw occupants into the landscape. Children’s bedrooms are housed in the first-floor addition and utility zones are pushed to the southern boundary of the ground floor to prioritize natural light and ventilation for living areas. A room in the original house adjacent to the new kitchen serves as the dining room, creating a slightly more formal arrangement than we would typically design, but one that suited the client’s needs. For a first house, the project ran pretty smoothly and was a lesson in diplomacy, particularly given the client’s father was executing the build and I was tasked as the messenger. Looking back, I can see my tentativeness in some of the project’s resolution, and it reminds me that with experience comes confidence and conviction. Open-minded clients having faith in a young architect is a great thing. For the small fee we charged at the time, they certainly got bang for their buck, but they also took on more risk working with us rather than a more experienced architect. For me, what is ultimately most apparent about this early experience is the optimism my client and I shared about the project.

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Architect Clare Cousins Architects +61 3 9329 2888 studio@clarecousins.com.au clarecousins.com.au

PAGE STREET

Project team Clare Cousins, Henry Tinsley, Fooi Ling Khoo, Deborah Rowe Builder Primad Engineer George E. Apted and Associates

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BALMORAL HOUSE BY C H R O F I

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BALMORAL HOUSE

A series of stacked interconnected volumes that carefully negotiate a tricky wedge-shaped site provided the solution for a client wishing to downsize their home without compromising amenity.

Words by Sing d'Arcy Photography by Katherine Lu

Australia holds the inglorious record of having some of the largest houses in the world, placed behind only the United States in terms of average size. Bigger is generally seen as better. There are, however, instances where clients are seeing the benefits of better designed, smaller homes that offer greater amenity and less maintenance. The Balmoral House designed by Chrofi, for example, sits on just half the land area of its neighbours. Though not a particularly small house compared to the national average, it represents a significant downsize for the clients and delivers an upgrade to family life. The clients’ previous home on Sydney’s North Shore was a rambling, multistorey house with poor connection between the living spaces and the terraced gardens. All their free time was spent maintaining a garden they didn’t use. When looking for a site to build their new family home, the clients were content to reduce the floor space they were accustomed to in order to increase amenity. With the goal of getting a better home out of a smaller plot, they approached Chrofi and left it up to them to come up with the best solution. Steven Fighera, director at Chrofi, says it “was very unusual that [the] client didn’t give us a fixed brief,” while the clients acknowledge, “we’re not the experts, the architects are … we looked to them to propose the best house for us.” A desire for access

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to light and views, connection to the garden and for maintaining the neighbours’ amenity drove the design. Located in Balmoral on Sydney’s North Shore, the site drops steeply from the street level towards the harbour. In the clients’ previous house, the living spaces were on the upper level and the bedrooms on the lower levels. They didn’t want this again, as it meant there was a disconnect between the living spaces and the garden. The lower level of Balmoral House is conceived as an interconnected set of living spaces, some more secluded and private – such as the children’s room at the rear – and others more open, such as the kitchen and family room. Steven says that while all the spaces have visual connection to each other the design is consciously not “open plan.” Clad in Roman-style bricks, structural fins mark out the staggered spaces and direct the eye toward the view. The kitchen has a triple aspect and is the heart of the house. It connects to the inner courtyard garden and upward to the street, outward toward the harbour and across the family room with a borrowed view. Clad in marble, the veined grey countertops work in dialogue with the dark grey joinery and the softer greys of the Basaltina floor and skimmed concrete ceilings. While the clients were very hands-off about the brief, they collaborated closely with the architects in choosing materials – right down to the selection of individual

NEW HOUSE

01 The design scheme prioritizes access to light and views and a connection to the garden. Photograph: Clinton Weaver. 02 The kitchen has a triple aspect to the inner courtyard garden, upward to the street and harbour and across the family room. 03 The house embodies Chrofi’s signature bold, pared-back tectonic forms and restrained materiality.

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4 Sydney, NSW

New house

Family

Site Floor

495 m² 300 m²

Design 1 y 2 m Build 1 y 6 m

Products Roofing: In-situ concrete roof Walls: Austral Bricks San Selmo Corso in custom colour; custom blackbutt timber lining Windows: Fairview double glazed windows in Dulux Electro ‘Black Ace’ Doors: Custom blackbutt timber doors; Olivari door hardware Flooring: Worldstone Basaltina honed flooring Lighting: Iguzzini Laser Blade Kitchen: Custom joinery by Premier Kitchens in Wilsonart Traceless laminate in ‘Ebony’; Gaggenau appliances; stone kitchen island, benchtops and splashback in ‘Super White’ from CDK Stone; Astra Walker Icon tapware Bathroom: Custom vanity in Calacatta marble; Worldstone Basaltina honed floor and wall tiles; Inax Yuki Border tiles from Artedomus; Roca Meridian toilet from Reece External elements: Worldstone Basaltina honed flooring

stone slabs for the kitchen. The clients and architects shared the same aesthetic vision to “keep the material palette consistent and to a minimum.” Restraint and a sense of “quality over ostentation” guided the interior and exterior materials, a characteristic seen throughout Chrofi’s body of work. The clients also worked very closely with the architects to ensure that the lighting was just right for their needs. All spaces have concealed indirect lighting sources as well as recessed direct lighting. Exposed fittings are not “features” but subtle additional elements to the ceiling plane. In order to get as much light as possible into the lower living level, Chrofi designed a staircase with clear glass risers. This means that the stairwell is not dark or overwhelming; instead, the treads seemingly float over the water feature that runs underneath them. Steven says that the “hanging stairs were designed as indoor/ outdoor space.” The elegant balustrade is formed by a series of repeated steel rods that provide the necessary sense of safety but with minimal spatial impact. The private “closed-door” zones of the house were envisaged as a timber-clad box that sits within the overall envelope of the building. This is clearly expressed in the blackbutt timber walls that offer a wonderful tactile experience. The upper level houses the sleeping spaces, with the main suite having its own private garden area. This sits atop the kitchen and its curved balustrade design provides a playful counterpoint to the strict geometry that orders the rest of the house. Balmoral House embodies Chrofi’s signature bold, pared-back tectonic forms and restrained materiality and, most importantly, the principle of “getting the planning right.” Beyond the formal aspects of architectural design, this house delivers amenity. The clients are happy that their new home gives them a greater house-to-garden ratio with far less maintenance required. The visual connection between the spaces means they are closer as a family and enjoy their house far more than their previous sprawler. In this, Balmoral House makes a clear case for quality over quantity.

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04 Private zones are housed in a timber-clad box that fits neatly within the home’s concrete and masonry shell.

BALMORAL HOUSE

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Entry Driveway Garage Bedroom Roof garden Terrace Living Pantry Kitchen

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05 The transparent glass risers of the staircase allow light to penetrate to the lower floor. 06 The upper level master suite has its own private garden area sitting atop the kitchen. 07 The â&#x20AC;&#x153;hanging stairsâ&#x20AC;? feature a steel rod balustrade that provides safety but has minimal spatial impact.

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The treads seemingly float over the water feature that runs underneath them.

Architect Chrofi +61 2 8096 8500 info@chrofi.com chrofi.com

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Project team Steven Fighera, John Choi, Tai Ropiha, Dmitriy Lewicki, Clinton Weaver, Felix Rasch, Susanne Pollmann Builder FS Hough Engineer SDA Structures Landscaping Sprout Landscape Architecture Lighting Lo-Fi Hydraulic engineer ITM Design

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SUSSEX BY POWELL AND GLENN AND MIM DESIGN

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With an emphasis on design quality and detailing, this home fuses the classic and contemporary to reimagine apartment living as generous and bespoke.

Words by Brett Seakins Photography by Sharyn Cairns

The term “downsizing” is a relative one. While most downsizers’ needs are catered for by the deluge of standardized apartments being constructed in Australia’s inner-city suburbs, there also exists a population of homeowners who seek the benefits of low-maintenance apartment life without losing any of the amenity their previous homes offered. The four apartments of Sussex deliver this amenity in spades: each one is approximately 260 square metres, significantly larger than both the average Australian apartment (125 square metres) and the average Australian house (230 square metres) built between 2017 and 2018. Despite this size, each of the four dwellings has been beautifully planned to feel like a comfortable and generous family home rather than a bloated “McApartment.” Located in Brighton in Melbourne’s inner south-east, Sussex is surrounded by polite beauty: a mix of graceful Federation-era homes, fauxhistorical mansions with embellishments appropriated from overlapping styles (copy–paste method) and a growing mass of contemporary houses seemingly competing to erase all character with their slick boxes (delete method). Within this context, Powell and Glenn Architects and Mim Design have created a contemporary building imbued with what project architect Ed Glenn describes as “a sense of age, like an eroding

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artefact,” proving that a modern architectural language can have both character and gravitas without copying, pasting or deleting. The elevation to the street embodies this notion best. Its monolithic white mass, punctured by deeply recessed windows, appears to peel away from the main building and stand freely like the remnant of an ancient ruin. This element is created using a curious double curve, which Glenn notes is “a device to disrupt the relentlessly orthogonal grid defining the local streets.” It is part of an ongoing study by Powell and Glenn into the qualities these deliberately imperfect, or “human,” curves can impart. Similar explorations of these disjointed geometries can be seen in the curving rammed-earth walls of TarraWarra Museum of Art in Victoria, also by the practice. The apartments are generous in both their spaciousness and quality of finish, characteristics that are rare to find in a multi-residential development, even more so in one that is completely speculative. Each apartment is planned to make the most of the east–west oriented site, with courtyards, balconies and living areas taking full advantage of the long northern aspect, while bathrooms and bedrooms are wisely located to the south. Entry from the street is also from the south, with a series of portals framing a notional threshold to the lobby shared by all four residences.

SUSSEX

01 The apartment’s spacious floor plan and focus on high quality details imbue it with a sense of timelessness. Artwork: Kayleigh Hetdon.

3 Melbourne, Vic

Apartment

Family

The entry to the ground floor apartment is a carefully composed event. A small antechamber off the lobby invites a brief pause before drawing occupants either along the gracefully curved and warm timberlined hallway to the formal dining area, past a series of discretely recessed bedroom doors, or directly into the north-facing kitchen and entertaining areas. It’s a nice choice to have and this sequence reminds me of the seldom-used front door to most Australian homes, reserved only for those who don’t yet know to just head straight around the back. The kitchen, as Miriam Fanning of Mim Design notes, was designed to appear as if it had been “dropped into place,” a semblance that arises thanks to the softly curved hallway and its timber lining, which allow the kitchen to stand alone in the space. This hallway wall, like the glass sconces and many other bespoke items in the apartment, draws on the architects’ interest in the “imperfect” curve. Miriam says that a significant amount of time was spent achieving just the right quantum of “unsettling” in the hall’s final curvature. The warm and restrained palette of the interior finishes is completely in sync with the intent to create a timeless building. The apartment features polished plaster, alive with the hand of the craftsperson, which bounces a beautifully diffuse light rather than absorbing it as conventional plasterboard would. In the kitchen and bathrooms, the floors, walls and vanities feature improbably large slabs of warm grey stone instead of the typical skin of tiles, evoking a sense that the space has been hewn from a monolithic form rather than assembled from thin surface finishes. Wherever one looks there is an incredible level of harmony in the resolution of the architecture and interior details, something that has perhaps been made possible by a development model in which the design is unfettered by the whims of future residents. Or perhaps this is precisely what we should expect when two highly regarded and experienced design practices combine forces.

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2 Site Floor

1,175 m² 270 m²

Products Roofing: Lysaght Klip-lok 700 Hi-strength roof cladding in Colorbond ‘Wallaby’ External walls: Paddy’s Bricks pressed red seconds used in brick veneer; Aitken Freeman cement render Internal walls: Bishop Décor Waterstone polished plaster in Dulux Wash and Wear Low Sheen ‘Natural White’; Eveneer timber veneer Windows and doors: Architectural Window Systems aluminium sliding doors, glazed windows and steel French doors all powdercoated in Dulux ‘Monument’; Pittella door hardware in ‘Black Opaque’ Flooring: Cavalier Bremworth Foss carpet in ‘Honiton’; Woodcut engineered European oak floor in ‘White Oiled’ Lighting: Custom pendants by Reduxr; custom domed wall sconce by Ambience; Anna Charlesworth Large Shield Light Kitchen: Gaggenau stainless steel pyrolytic oven, microwave and cooktop; joinery in Eveneer timber

APARTMENT

Design 10 m Build 1 y 2 m

veneer; Apex Stone honed stone slabs in ‘Tundra Grey’; Zip Hydrotap Celsius All-In-One tap in ‘Gun Metal’; Abey Piazza Double Square Bowl sink Bathroom: Astra Walker Icon basin and shower mixers, shower rail and robe hook, all in ‘Iron Bronze’; Villeroy and Boch Architectura white ceramic basin; Moda Teresa freestanding stone bath from ACS Designer Bathrooms; Apex Stone honed stone slabs in ‘Tundra Grey’; custom shelves in bronze metal finish by Coben Heating and cooling: Daikin VRV IV Heat Recovery units; Speedheat underfloor heating; Foster Hydronic Heating hydronic wall panels External elements: Eco Outdoor Bolzano sandstone crazy paving, Chalford limestone paving and cobblestones Other: Furniture from Modern Times, Cult and Luke Furniture; rugs from Halcyon Lake; artworks from Modern Times and Studio Gallery Melbourne

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02 The restrained palette and monolithic qualities of the building are mirrored in the kitchen’s minimal geometry. 03 Through a careful choreographing of light, form and materiality, the architects have crafted an elegant and functional home. Artwork: Sean Fennessy. 04 In the bedrooms, polished plasterboard walls diffuse the light and windows frame verdant garden views. Artwork: Phoebe Halpin. 05 The building’s exterior has a sense of age that sits comfortably beside the “polite beauty” of neighbouring houses.

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SUSSEX

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Entry Bedroom Kitchen Living Study Terrace Garden

Architect Powell and Glenn +61 3 9534 8367 info@powellandglenn.com.au powellandglenn.com.au

HOUSES 130

Interior designer Mim Design +61 3 9826 1266 info@mimdesign.com.au mimdesign.com.au

APARTMENT

Powell and Glenn project team Ed Glenn Mim Design project team Miriam Fanning, Kristiina Reeve, Lisa Ransom Builder Coben Engineer Irwinconsult Landscaping Robert Boyle Landscape Design and Construction

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BUNDEENA BEACH HOUSE BY GROVE ARCHITECTS

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BUNDEENA BEACH HOUSE

Garage Entry Bedroom Media room Void Store Lounge Laundry Music room Kitchen Dining Terrace Outdoor shower

On a rocky outcrop at the eastern edge of a secluded beach south of Sydney, this house maximizes opportunities to connect with the spectacular natural environment that surrounds it.

Words by Rachel Harris Photography by Michael Nicholson

Bundeena is a place of contrasts. Its location, only twenty-five kilometres south of Sydney as the crow flies, might suggest a popular getaway destination. However, restricted accessibility (a ferry ride from Cronulla or a winding drive through the Royal National Park) protects it from the hordes. It also adds an extra degree of difficulty to building projects. Sydney residents Kathy and Shiva approached Grove Architects to design a new family holiday home to replace a damp, rundown shack on their complex Bundeena site. Their brief asked for an unimposing house that, unlike the existing shack, would maximize their connection to the natural environment and celebrate the site’s expansive western water views. Following an extended design period, a local foreman was engaged alongside the selected Sydney-based contractor to manage issue of site accessibility. The final result is a robust and considered dwelling that is fundamentally of its site. Like Bundeena itself, the house is also something of contrasts – both a modest and a

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standout architectural response to a challenging but spectacular coastal site. From across the bay, there is little indication of the home’s existence. However, on approach, its visual difference to neighbouring properties certainly commands attention. From the street, the steeply sloping site means that the most visible part of the house is its roof. Grove Architects has capitalized on this, creating a green roof that leads the eye effortlessly into the mature eucalypts beyond. The roof ’s native oasis overspills its delicately detailed edge on one side, but is controlled by a cleverly integrated strip of photovoltaic panels on the other. Rather than utilizing the maximum permitted height, the building nestles as low as possible into the site. The view from street to waterfront is enhanced by the roof, not restricted by it. The architects’ considered, contextual design response balances openness and outdoor connection with privacy and protection from the elements. A simple building form comprises two perpendicular, intersecting volumes, one clad in cedar and the other

NEW HOUSE

01 Bundeena Beach House is designed to connect to the environment and celebrate the western water views. 02 The kitchen and dining areas are oriented to exploit the views and seamlessly connect with the garden.

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4 Bundeena, NSW

New house

Holiday home

2 + 1 powder room

in rusted Corten steel. The rich, earthy metal is both striking and camouflaging. The combination of robust materials, simple structure and minimal moving parts reduces corrosion risk and increases durability in this exposed environment. A slender orthogonal plan allows the main body of the house to retreat from the site’s side boundaries, one of which borders a public waterfront access route. By extending further toward its narrow northern edge, the house enjoys a long western elevation to the water. The secondary volume gives privacy to the primary living spaces. Internally, a double-height void connects the upper entry directly to the lower living spaces. Identification of the separate volumes is maintained as the cedar cladding outside becomes a plywood wall inside. A sculptural skylight roof is angled to allow precious northern and eastern daylight into the heart of the house, inviting morning light to dance across the void’s internal walls like an ever-changing work of art. The upper floor is solid and enclosed to reduce exposure to the harsh western sun. Fixed perforated metal panels provide an elegant shading strategy to both maintain views out and mask the glazing externally. In contrast, the ground floor is open, seamlessly connecting with the garden. On the eastern side, a dark wall grounds the building, providing a peaceful backdrop to the outlook. The kitchen and dining areas are oriented to exploit the views. Connection to, and consideration of, the environment continues in the building’s operation. A strip of solar panels on the roof generates electricity, more than satisfying the family’s energy requirements and eliminating the need for a gas connection; and rainwater is collected for garden irrigation. Nature is present throughout. Trees wave through the skylight and framed views draw the eye outside. Native succulents hang gently beyond bedroom windows from the roof above.

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BUNDEENA BEACH HOUSE

Site Floor

538 m² 265 m²

Design 2 y Build 1 y 4 m

Products Roofing: Rooftop garden in collaboration with Junglefy and Bates Landscape External walls: Corten steel cladding from Archclad; rough-sawn cedar cladding; dressed cedar screens Internal walls: Birch plywood; painted platerboard Windows: Breezway louvres with cedar frames Doors: AWS aluminium sliding doors; Viridian Comfort Plus glass. Flooring: Polished concrete flooring; blackbutt floorboards in Bona Traffic matt finish Lighting: Trend Lighting track lights, strip lights and downlights; Rakumba Highline pendant by Archier; Giffin Design Nude T5 pendant Kitchen: Custom joinery in Eveneer veneer; Maximum benchtop and splashback in ‘Pepper’ from Artedomus; CDK stone island benchtop in ‘Super White’; Abey Emporio kitchen mixer; Gaggenau oven, Siemens induction cooktop; Liebherr fridge; Miele dishwasher Bathroom: Surface Gallery Ardesia porcelain tiles; Brodware Yokato and City Plus tapware; Kaldewei freestanding bath Heating and cooling: Maxim Louvres external venetians; Cheminees Philippe fireplace; Daikin air conditioning; Big Ass Fans Haiku overhead fan External elements: River-washed gravel; sandstone pavers; Corten steel planters

03 A sculptural skylight is angled to allow northern and eastern daylight into the house. 04 The roofâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garden overspills green tendrils on one side, and has an integrated strip of photovoltaic panels on the other.

Architect Grove Architects +61 4 1480 3603 info@grovearchitects.com.au www.grovearchitects.com.au

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NEW HOUSE

Project team Sky Grove, John Grove Builder Barry Built Engineer Cardno Landscaping Junglefy, Bates Landscape Energy Consultant Immortal Systems

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ALBERT PA R K TERRACE BY WELLARD ARCHITECTS

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This renovation of an inner-Melbourne terrace cleverly navigates the site’s constrained footprint, employing key architectural moves that make for an efficient and uplifting family home.

Words by Tobias Horrocks Photography by Derek Swalwell

Adding an extension to a terrace house is a common architectural design brief in the inner suburbs of Australian cities and Wellard Architects had completed a number of such projects before this one. “Most terraces, as a typology, are about cramming as much program into them as possible on a tight footprint,” says practice director Huw Wellard. In Albert Park Terrace, Wellard Architects took a risk: rather than squeeze in an extra bedroom, they decided to create a double-height void above the kitchen and dining space. It was a risk that this particular client was happy to take, because this time Huw was designing for himself and his young family. He doesn’t regret the decision. Not only does it bring northerly light into the south-facing extension, it also allows acoustic and visual connectivity between a rooftop barbecue terrace and the rest of the living spaces. “We love to entertain,” Huw says. “The kitchen is downstairs, you can walk upstairs to the barbecue and still be in conversation with everyone in this one hardworking zone.” Huw, his wife Jade and their two young children had been living in the old terrace for fourteen months before undertaking the renovations. It was dark and cold and didn’t even have a functioning kitchen. “I barbecued every day; it was pretty full-on,” Huw recalls. They used this time to think about what the house needed. Following a precedent set by many of their neighbours in the street, they went up by two storeys, but were required by heritage regulations to set back the extension to make the new work almost invisible from across the road. “We would have loved to go up one more storey – that way you get ocean views as well – but that’s never going to happen here,” he says. As it is, the rooftop terrace has unobstructed city views to the north, beyond the treetops and over the re-slated roof of the existing terrace. “One of the

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ALBERT PARK TERRACE

4 Melbourne, Vic

Alteration + addition

Family

advantages of being on this side of the street is that you don’t overlook neighbours [to the north] and so don’t need privacy screening [that might obstruct city views],” says Huw. On the rear garden elevation, where privacy screening to the main bedroom is required, Wellard Architects has employed a series of horizontal battens. The whole facade is extraordinarily neat in its detailing, with no visible downpipes or flashing. The timber cladding acts as a rainscreen, as Huw puts it: gaps between the blackbutt planks allow the rain to penetrate the screen, behind which is a second waterproof facade made from compressed fibre cement sheet, painted black. The detailing is similarly tidy throughout the interior. Sometimes the hardworking minimalism of the details led to temporary problems during construction – a squeaky floor or a leaky door – but the team was able to rectify any issues with hands-on assistance from Huw, who, as it happens, also worked on the build. He ran the project as an ownerbuilder with help from two expert carpenters “borrowed” from Locbuild, a company Wellard Architects had previously worked with. Choosing to work with timber played to the subcontractors’ strengths, although the material choice is unsurprising given Wellard Architects’ portfolio of work. Designing and building his own house enabled Huw to experiment with new details. Some needed several attempts to get right, while others were a success first time. For instance, the polished concrete floor was ground back with a ceramic disc rather than the more conventionally used metal one, producing a subtler-than-usual salt-and-pepper effect that is now in demand from new clients. It’s common for owner-builder projects to take longer on site than those managed by the enforcement of building contracts, but in this case the timing was efficient, with construction lasting just nine months. Huw gives credit to Jade for this logistical feat, as she encouraged him not to agonize for too long over design decisions. Huw says that in small projects like this, you only need to make one or two key moves. Introducing the double-height void was the main one, but there is also something special about the blackbutt-battened floor of the bridge link that crosses the void and leads to the main bedroom: it is an identical copy of the privacy screen outside, complete with the black steel-plate edging, rotated to become a floor. “The language of the house is pretty simple,” says Huw, a statement that belies the effort and consideration that have clearly gone into the details. The whole design is minimal, precise and highly restrained. Apart from the generous use of blackbutt, the colour palette is almost greyscale. Within this narrow tonal range the surfaces are given three-dimensional texture and varying degrees of reflectivity that respond to light and to the touch of a hand in subtle ways. For instance, the dimpled matt bathroom tiles are hand-pressed and thus slightly irregular. Huw says that at some times of day the bathroom walls appear black, and at others a dark eucalypt green. With such clean lines, precise alignments and broad continuous surfaces, it is these material quirks and the play of light and shadow that come to the fore. The double-height void is the big architectural move in a design that is rigorously utilitarian and efficient. Everything has to work hard in a tight footprint – the mezzanine study is also the corridor to the bedroom, while the laundry is tucked under the stair – but at Albert Park Terrace the void allows the space to breathe, the light to slant in and the occupants to commune.

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ALTERATION + ADDITION

2 Site Floor

167 m² 159 m²

Design 5 m Build 9 m

Per m² $4,020

Products Roofing: Lysaght Klip-lok roof in Zincalume External walls: Eco Timber blackbutt battens in Cutek Extreme wood oil Internal walls: Painted Easycraft V-groove lining boards in Dulux ‘Natural White’; painted CSR plasterboard in Dulux ‘Domino’ Windows and doors: Timber windows and doors in Cutek Extreme wood oil by McKay Joinery; powdercoated steel windows and doors by Steel Windows Australia Flooring: Boral blackbutt flooring in Loba water-based polyurethane finish; Pronto Concrete off-white concrete with matt seal; Cavalier Bremworth loop pile carpet Lighting: Flos Easy Kap downlights, Running Magnet track lighting and external wall lights Kitchen: Custom blackbutt joinery in 2-pac finish by One Interiors; Maximum stone splashback in ‘Moon’; Gaggenau oven, cooktop and microwave; Qasair rangehood; Miele fridge and dishwasher; Jordain Stone stone island benchtop in ‘Grigio Lato’; Franke stainless steel sink; Astra Walker tapware in ‘Matt Black’ Bathroom: Custom blackbutt joinery in 2-pac finish by One Interiors (bathroom); custom joinery in crown-cut blackbutt veneer by One Interiors (ensuite); Jordain Stone Carrara marble benchtops; Mutina ceramic tiles; Rogerseller basins and toilets; Astra Walker tapware in ‘Brushed Platinum’ Heating and cooling: Daikin bulkhead units; in-slab hydronic heating; hydronic panel heating External elements: Eco Timber recycled blackbutt decking in Cutek Extreme wood oil; Bamstone bluestone paving; Element Fire Pit by Adam Goodrum for Tait

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01 The tight footprint of the existing terrace necessitated an efficient approach to establishing a new spatial order. 02 A double-height void above the kitchen and dining area draws in light and connects the rooftop terrace to the rest of the house. 03 Illuminated by light from above, the shower wall echoes the texture of the houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exterior timber cladding. 04 Minimalist architectural details serve as a backdrop to a few key spatial moves that elevate the interiors.

1 2 3 4 5

Entry Bedroom Courtyard Laundry Kitchen

6 7 8 9 10

Living/dining Deck Roof terrace Study Void

First floor 1:400

1 3

Ground floor 1:400

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ALBERT PARK TERRACE

Architect Wellard Architects +61 3 9645 5220 info@wellardarchitects.com.au wellardarchitects.com.au

HOUSES 130

ALTERATION + ADDITION

Project team Huw Wellard, Matt Myers, Harriet Collins Builder Locbuild Engineer Clive Steele Partners Landscaping consultant Eckersley Garden Architecture

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Osborne House

With a panorama of bush and water as its backdrop, the design for this house, built in 1995, uses materials and details reminiscent of wooden boatbuilding to immerse those who dwell there in the magic of the surrounds.

by Richard Leplastrier

Words by Peter Tonkin Photography by Michael Nicholson, courtesy of Modern House

REVISITED

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OSBORNE HOUSE

Almost one hundred years ago, the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier declared “a house is a machine for living in” (Vers une Architecture, 1923). But in contrast to Le Corbusier’s sleek white constructs or today's appliance-like “automated homes,” the mechanistic qualities of the Osborne House on Sydney’s Pittwater, with its thin skin and the stripped-back revelation of all its parts, recall a motorbike or a yacht. It is genuinely responsive and flexible, but the occupant must be proactive in operating it, pulling its levers and opening its hatches in response to the climate and the needs of their own occupation. As Tom, the home’s current owner, says with reference to a well-played soccer pass, it is “a house with information” not didacticism, but it is deterministic in its necessity for involvement, its requirement that you engage positively. He also says that the design compels you to be outside, because here is the reason the house exists. Set among tall eucalypts on a gentle north-facing slope that leads down to Pittwater, inaccessible by car and alive with wallabies, goannas and birds, it is a “machine” to make the bush habitable, a device to enable living in and with the environment. This is in sharp contrast to many contemporary dwellings, which are heavily insulated, small-windowed and airconditioned, and which defend against their settings, cocooning their owners from nature’s changeability. The house, designed by Richard Leplastrier, Karen Lambert and Ian Martin, was built in 1995 for a professional writer and was the union of two small existing cabins, each a single room: one from the 1940s in fibro and one from the 1980s in arsenic-treated pine logs. Inspired by the original owner’s house at Gundaroo in the New South Wales Southern Tablelands (a series of pavilions on one level connected by a courtyard), the first design move was to raise the buildings to the same height and connect them with as large a deck as possible. The second move was to build a delicate and unifying third pavilion. The deck is a great stage with the panorama of bush and water as its backdrop – its trajectory “throws you out into the bush,” with the sheltering pavilions at your back. It is a simple structure, with poles and rope as the balustrade and the pipe terminals the ball fittings from car towbars – a genuinely witty machine borrowing. The smaller original pavilion has been minimally refurbished as a cosy bedroom, with windows front and back. The larger pavilion has had its old pine logs removed and a new skin of ply fitted, and the windows have been replaced with light screens of translucent polycarbonate, Japanese-inspired in their subtle control of light and temperature. It is a generous, warm den, a place for study and writing. The linking pavilion is ostensibly a single room – living room, kitchen and bathroom all in one – but as you move through, it is revealed as a complex series of spaces,

HOUSES 130

REVISITED

01 The house is set among tall eucalypts on a gentle north-facing slope.

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02 The linking pavilion is a single room â&#x20AC;&#x201C; living room, kitchen and bathroom all in one. 03 Preliminary plan, section and elevation sketches by project architect Ian Martin. Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. 04 The main northfacing room breaks all the rules of house design but it highlights the adaptability of humans and the bush setting. 05 The circular openings appear decorative but are in fact a logical response to the materialâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s qualities.

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large and small, that structure the operations of daily life. To the rear are alcoves for the stuff that needs to be concealed: an indoor toilet, the fridge, shelves for chandlery and tools, and, behind the small bedroom, a deck with the “outdoor toilet,” a place with privacy where this most mundane of tasks becomes an immersion in the bush. Here, the building declares its farmhouse-like acceptance of the messiness of life – transcending the modern desire for decluttering. The main north-facing room breaks all the accepted rules of house design. The cooking and food preparation areas are far apart, the shower is in the centreline of the bathroom, paths cross everywhere and the fridge is on the verandah. But it works, highlighting the fallacy that our spaces need to be efficient, ergonomic and tailored to our individualities. This pervasive preconception grew from the same “functionalism” that inspired Le Corbusier and is reinforced in every house and kitchen magazine. Humans, however, are infinitely adaptable. Abandon your preconceptions and you find that this seemingly adverse plan can be the setting for delight, a place where the magic of the bush and the water elevates chores to experiences, and where you re-evaluate your approach to cooking, eating and relaxing. Architecturally, the house is stamped with the creativity of its designers, fusing a suite of parts into a delightful whole. Leplastrier’s wooden boatbuilding past is evident: a minimum of material is employed to maximum effect, and ply, recycled hardwood and found objects are crafted with care. Elements of yacht design are found in the pulleys that operate the shutters and the great folding door opening the main pavilion to the deck, and in the varnished timber of the walls. The tiny shower and the toilets also seem like they have landed from a boat, along with the rope railings with their pipe stanchions. There is also something of the yacht in the compactness of the whole, the way each part is fitted into the others and the economy of material. This concentration on minimalism can be understood not only as a desire for genuine economy and a responsible utilization of resources – valuable concerns then and even more poignant today – but also as a response to the sheer difficulty of transporting material by barge across Pittwater and by sheer sweat up the hill from the wharf. It

Floor plan 1:100 (1994–1995)

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OSBORNE HOUSE

06 Reminiscent of Japanese techniques, some windows have been replaced with screens of translucent polycarbonate.

…inaccessible by car and alive with wallabies, goannas and birds, it is a ‘machine’ to make the bush habitable, a device to enable living in and with the environment. HOUSES 130

REVISITED

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07 Leplastrier's past as a boatbuilder is evident in the pulleyoperated shutters and the folding door. 08 The compact shower is reminiscent of the efficient bathing spaces found on boats.

also underlines the careful control of the spaces between – decks, verandahs, bushland “rooms” – as the owner says, “the strongest part of the house is what’s not built.” The Osborne House was built soon after Leplastrier and Lambert rebuilt their own house a couple of inlets further south at Lovett Bay. Here, too, is the single-layer envelope, the simple pavilion form, with the openings treated not as framed doors and windows but as simple cut-outs in the ply-sheeted walls. At first, these circles appear decorative, but on deeper analysis they are revealed as a straightforward response to the methodology of construction and the qualities of the material itself, derived from the easy sweep of a jigsaw in a cutting beam, keeping the “offcut” as the opening’s closing shutter, artfully spring-loaded and bottom-hinged. The plain brass garden taps and the lovingly sourced and located Japanese pine bathtub are also echoes of the rebuilt Lovett Bay house. The house’s Japanese-inspired delicacy is surprisingly thermally effective, catching every breeze in summer and cooling down quickly at night. As Tom says, “in winter it’s never too cold – there’s a huge heat sink just nearby.” The benefit of the ocean’s thermal mass is increased by the building’s air-tightness, which allows the small spaces to be heated effectively. The site seems to sum up the house, beyond any analysis of architecture. Tom attributes this to its key location on the bay – above is a great cave, its midden of shells showing that here, over the millennia, the original owners of the land chose their shelter. Here is a place of connection – of the dwellers to the site, of the house itself to the land. Invisible from the water, the house demands relaxation, engagement and living in its widest sense. It is a place for the magic of the bush.

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Architect Richard Leplastrier

OSBORNE HOUSE

Project team Richard Leplastrier, Karen Lambert, Ian Martin Builder Jeffrey Broadfield

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Kangaroo Valley Outhouse G A R D E N PAV I L I O N

A reimagining of the traditional Aussie outdoor dunny, this shimmering cube in the landscape offers 360-degree views and quiet sanctuary. Words by Leanne Amodeo Photography by Robert Walsh

Ask any Aussie to describe their experience of an outhouse and chances are it won’t be good. These typically stuffy, awkward timber structures seemingly in the middle of nowhere are hardly what you’d call sophisticated. And those flies. Along with that heat. But outhouses are a necessity, often hard-working and generally serve their purpose well. So it was only a matter of time before the outdoor dunny received an image overhaul. For Madeleine Blanchfield Architects, the brief to design a new bathroom separate to their clients’ existing cabin was an opportunity to reimagine, with whimsy, a typology common in Australia throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The outhouse was to be situated low on a lush hillside in the Kangaroo Valley, south of Sydney. “We wanted to create something which made the most of the incredible site and secluded nature of the cabin,” says the practice’s director, Madeleine Blanchfield. “And we were mindful to not just replicate the home’s style or introduce an architectural folly that would serve to interrupt the serenity of the landscape.” The resulting structure is constructed from one-way glass and presents as a compact, mirrored cube, slightly elevated from the ground and nestled among the surrounding vegetation. It blends seamlessly into the hillside

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and “disappears”– an optical illusion that never ceases to capture the imagination of the cabin’s short-stay visitors. Internally, the experience is completely immersive, with the glass walls simultaneously offering kaleidoscopic views of the bush and multi-faceted reflections of the small interior. The interior scheme is minimalist, with the internal blackened steel framework treated as a feature and adding to the walls’ prism-like effect. Next to these supports and 360 degree views, the strikingly white freestanding bathtub, toilet and hand basin provide crisp accents. And all the while, you can see out but no one can see in. Blanchfield and her team literally didn’t have much room to play with, but they made sure the outhouse’s detailing is impeccable. Any misstep would have been magnified, diminishing the overall aesthetic and compromising the project’s conceptual nature. However, form is also matched by function and for all its good looks, the structure is super efficient. The mirror is a high thermal performance material and the gap between the floor and ground allows for plenty of additional ventilation to avoid overheating. Mirrored outhouses may be some way off becoming a “thing” but this project is the perfect mix of quiet sanctuary and sublime setting. madeleineblanchfield.com

POSTSCRIPT

01 From the freestanding bathtub, visitors can take in views of the Kangaroo Valley’s lush bushland. 01 The mirrored box “disappears” into the hillside, creating the perfect bathroom sanctuary.