Table of contents for Issue 135 August 2020 in Houses

Architectural theorists Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown and Steven Izenour famously posed that a work of architecture could either be a duck or a decorated shed. The decorated sheds were featureless buildings that had been layered with a superficial veneer of “meaning,” while the ducks were buildings that were symbolic in and of themselves. Writing during the 1970s, the authors were grappling with the phenomena of Las Vegas and its appropriated architectural icons. Since then there have been occasional ducks in the pond, but architecture has arguably been travelling down the path of decorated sheds for some time. There is something about Seawind by Coy Yiontis Architects, however, that drags the dichotomy of the duck versus the decorated shed back up to the surface. This is certainly a building that is…

Walking past this home, in a street full of heritage terrace houses in Fitzroy North, Melbourne, you may not immediately realize the building is new. From the street, the crisp facade of what at first appears to be a historic worker’s cottage hints at the highly resolved architecture beyond the front door. This “door” however, is in fact a battened gate that deftly mediates between the public and private realms. Behind the unusual entry, the main two-storey volume of the house sits between a verdant front courtyard and a rear outdoor living space. Crafted from concrete, glass and steel, this modernist structure is bathed in sunlight from two courtyards with orientation to the east and west, and a quasi terrarium to the north. This clever siting, responding to the perils…

Bands of stately Edwardian houses at the edges of our major cities mark the reach of tram and train lines over time. Ruckers Hill House by Studio Bright, an intriguing alteration and addition to one such Edwardian, reflects new changes to the city and the way we live in it. The new addition pulls to the rear of the site, giving importance to secondary streets, and sends up a first floor, periscope-like, to take the measure of Melbourne’s ever-changing skyline. Ruckers Hill House celebrates then subverts the order of operation of the Edwardian. The original double-loaded central corridor is extended in high-vis, bisecting the garden into an entry court and pool. It is a powerful move that is then totally dissolved in the extension, which has a subtle and unexpected…

A dramatic clifftop site is carefully calibrated into a series of episodic encounters at Vaucluse Garden – of foregrounds and backgrounds, and worlds within worlds. Seeking first to establish the geologic circumstances of the escarpment, Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture with Bates Landscape has used the garden as a contextualizing “habitat,” mediating between the extraordinary site and the architecture of the house. The garden consists of sense-rich native and edible flora, set against the raw strata of exposed bed rock. This new topography ingeniously creates a series of subtle, protected and verdant microecologies, which resolve the edges of the built elements on the site. To the seaward side, the gardens are sunken and sheltered below the cliff edge, whilst also serving to foreground the horizon’s expanse. Delicate and detailed, Vaucluse Garden’s…

Established in 2016 by Michael Lineburg and Lynn Wang, Lineburg Wang is an emerging practice that has already asserted itself among Queensland’s wonderful lineage of architectural talent. The influence of work experience at prominent Brisbane-based practices is apparent, but there is a palpable freshness to the suite of houses by Lineburg Wang. The residential work by this duo is ingrained in its context, tracing histories and inventing new ones. Park Road House (see Houses 134) is a fine example of a response to a traditional Queenslander house: it is subtle and sympathetic to the existing condition, with layers of history revealed. Simultaneously, the architects’ bold and clever design moves transform it into a contemporary home. Lineburg Wang’s depth of interrogation of each new residential brief is impressive, solving pragmatic concerns…

There is a new Australian residential architecture that has evolved over the past decade that aptly responds to our climate, natural landscape and social context in playful, joyous and inventive ways. A select few highly influential Australian practices have driven this evolution of Australian design and Durbach Block Jaggers (DBJ) is one of them. DBJ was founded in 1987 by Neil Durbach, who was joined by Camilla Block as director in 1998 and by David Jaggers in 2007. There are subtle regional variations in this wave of residential architecture, but DBJ’s work stands apart from the clean straight lines seen in many contemporary Sydney houses. The practice’s pursuit of endless surprise results in complex geometries and overlapping spaces with highlights and deep shadows. DBJ aspires to create new pleasure in…

Subiaco House by Vokes and Peters is radical by stealth. It wears the uniform of its Federation-era neighbourhood with polite grace: timber bay windows on street elevations; an exuberant hat of terracotta tiles; rainwater heads like neat broaches on notched lapels; and its rafters, battens and struts glimpsed in flashes of the petticoat. The home’s finely detailed interiors are rich with material and tectonic expression, in tile, stone, concrete, metal and timber. Skirts and cornices are there but not there. Neat ankles touch down lightly. This polite heritage response belies the home’s true radical heart. Its planning subverts the object-in-landscape, “garden suburb” type. The ground-floor wall extends to the site boundaries, transforming from bay window to gate to arbor, fence to screen, engaged seating, entry, circulation. It harnesses the “public”…

Once typified by scenes of bronzed bathers enjoying long, hot summers, the Gold Coast has been going through a slow transition from holiday playground to Australia’s sixth-largest city. With the unfortunate demolition of many of its understated 1950s houses, the laid-back and neighbourly feel of the area has shifted. Located within this challenging suburban context, Cantala Avenue House by ME is an alteration and addition that joyously reinterprets the history of its place and beach shack typology. Rather than erase the character of the neighbourhood, ME has tactfully taken an ordinary 1970s split-level house, reworking and extending the plan to better engage with the street, the garden and the yard. The courtyard and pool are now allowed privacy, while a low brick wall and terrace connect the home’s interior to…

Fitzroy North House 02 by Rob Kennon Architects presents an elegant solution to the tension that can exist between a new house and its heritage streetscape. The home’s carefully composed form reflects the typical urban massing of Victorian cottages and replaces a non-contributory building in a heritage precinct of Melbourne. Rob Kennon Architects has used traditional materials, like timber, brick and corrugated metal, in a contemporary way to make a quietly powerful statement. The pitched roof, implied verandah and timber picket fence highlight the critical lines of the neighbouring properties, while restrained and thoughtful external detailing encourages closer inspection. All expectations of the terrace house typology immediately dissolve, however, on entering Fitzroy North House 02. This is inner urban living with a delightful connection to nature and sky that belies…

What kind of holiday house would make a suitable getaway if your main home had recently been awarded the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Queensland chapter’s 1964 Residence of the Year? This was the challenging decision faced by Pam Wilson, an artist, and her husband Patrick, a soil engineer. The couple’s combination of technical and creative outlooks positioned them as natural architecture patrons. Prior to undertaking the design of their holiday house, they had worked with Michael Bryce on the engineering company’s premises, and had engaged John Dalton to design their main home near Brisbane’s Mount Coot-tha. Wilson Beach House was created in a context where the relaxed weekend lifestyle of a beach house typically offered a clear distinction from the formal character of a permanent home. Already possessing a…

The State Library Victoria’s South Rotunda is a kind of in-between space. The small gallery could easily be overlooked by a preoccupied visitor, yet it is precisely this quality that made it an appropriate setting for the unassuming character of the exhibition Out Driving. This selection of photographs by draftsman and amateur photographer Peter Wille is, however, worth far more than a passing glance. The exhibition comprised 50 enlarged reproductions of colour slides depicting Melbourne’s mid-century architecture, a tiny portion of more than 6,000 photographs in Wille’s collection (now held by the library). Wille accumulated these images as a result of innumerable forays “out driving” through the suburbs of Melbourne and beyond. The photographs, taken predominantly during the 1950s and ’60s, depict some of the city’s most familiar examples of…

Prior to designing this house, YSG principal Yasmine Saleh Ghoniem had worked with her client on Pacific Bondi, a 70-square-metre two-bedroom apartment (completed when Yasmine was a principal of interior design practice Amber Road). Newly engaged, with two kids and a third on the way, the owners purchased their next home in nearby Dover Heights and again engaged Yasmine for a renovation and refurbishment. Rather than a home that relied on tired tropes of coastal living, where muted “sand and sea” colour palettes reigned, they wanted one that would offer a vibrant but calm home for their growing family. Perched on a hill, the boxy home was a rabbit warren of tiny dark rooms and hallways, a “soulless” house with “overzealous” travertine floors, explains Yasmine. YSG opened up the ground…

The houses in Melbourne’s oldest suburb are scattered between commercial and industrial buildings and, increasingly, hip cafes that reveal themselves when the steel roller doors are up. Collingwood has been typified by this mix of small residential subdivisions and industrial sites since its inception in 1839. Though the buildings rarely rise above two storeys, the area is gritty and urban in feel and mostly treeless. No wonder it attracted a couple interested in the industrial aesthetic. They came to architecture studio Ha with an idea for creating a domestic oasis they titled “industrial/botanical,” and, as principal architect Nick Harding explains, “they wanted a brutalist piece of architecture that was really focused around the natural landscape; they wanted that contrast.” Classic brutalism is typified by off-form concrete – concrete that has…

Cantala Avenue House by ME champions the capacity of modest residential architecture to significantly impact the way we live in Australia. Sited within an unremarkable yet incredibly familiar suburban context, this alteration and addition to a ramshackle 1970s-era house offers its neighbourhood a welcoming communal space comprising a new brickwork entry sequence, planting and seating under a mature poinciana tree. The balance between public and private space has been skilfully navigated, with all the public zones of the home pushed to the street edge.The experience of the dwelling is expanded to encompass the street, demonstrating how design interventions can genuinely build community and neighbourhood. Responding to its location on the Gold Coast, the house is a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional beach shack – carefully avoiding replication, it is a…

The mastery of Bismarck House, located on a corner block in a Bondi laneway, lies in its civic generosity to the urban margin. In crafting this extension to the rear of a typical semi-detached dwelling, Andrew Burges Architects has sought active engagement with the public realm that, in turn, brings the domestic life of the house into direct relation with the energy and materiality of its laneway context. The salvaged brick boundary wall is articulated with amenity and civility, undulating to soften the streetscape and to create new thresholds into the site. As part of the elevation’s mise en scène, the kitchen window opens directly into the lane, anticipating serendipitous social interaction with passersby – an important and urbane connection that is so often avoided in tight metropolitan sites. An…

Cremorne Point Apartment is a work of intelligent, restrained design. Its simplicity and limited palette of white walls and pale oak timber bring light and life deep into the interior of this moderately sized apartment in a way that might seem inevitable. Yet it has taken Studio Plus Three’s sure hand and subtle confidence to make it happen. A reworking of a 1980s apartment in Sydney’s Chippendale, the project replaces a semi-enclosed kitchen and opens up the interior to harbour views. With minimal structural alteration, it allows the floor plan to manifest both private and contiguous space, which is in itself a transformative approach that makes modest spaces appear generous. The architect has held true to the design idea in every detail of its execution. Of course, Cremorne Point Apartment…

The jury found the deliberation for this year’s Sustainability Award to be a delightful challenge, given the breadth of mature and thoughtful shortlisted work that championed sustainability as inherent to good design. Waratah Secondary House by Anthrosite stood out to the jury, however, in part due to its modesty. It is a home designed and built with affordability, pragmatism and comfort in mind, while also delivering a resolved and thoughtful architectural outcome. Waratah Secondary House demonstrates something that we need more of – housing that doesn’t cost the earth, literally or figuratively. The jury was particularly impressed by its response to context as an infill dwelling created on a small, challenging site, along with the architect’s focus on creating a high-performance envelope, and on utilizing efficient and low-waste materials and…

NEW HOUSE UNDER 200 M² NEW HOUSE OVER 200 M2 HOUSE ALTERATION AND ADDITION OVER 200 M² HOUSE ALTERATION AND ADDITION UNDER 200 M² APARTMENT OR UNIT GARDEN OR LANDSCAPE SUSTAINABILITY HOUSE IN A HERITAGE CONTEXT EMERGING ARCHITECTURE PRACTICE REGISTRATIONS FOR THE 2021 HOUSES AWARDS WILL OPEN IN JANUARY 2021. HOUSESAWARDS.COM.AU…