Lena House – Smart Design Studio

Lena House - Smart Design Studio

Smart Design Studio was engaged by a repeat client to breathe new life into a grand Victorian terrace in Sydney. Central to the transformation was the conversion of an existing single-story garage into a contemporary infill structure that houses spacious stairs and lifts connecting all five levels. A narrow full-height slot window connects the historic facade to the clearly expressed new brick form.

The site had an almost vacant piece of land beside it, the carport between the house and neighboring property. This presented an opportunity to put a sculptural stair and elevator that connects all the floors of the five-story house. This unlocked the floorplan and removed the great divide in the middle, which was the staircase. As a result, there’s a better flow throughout with gracefully proportioned rooms from front to back.

The street-level slab was removed to the rear of the house to create an airy light-filled double-height space with brick blade walls. Light now penetrates well beyond the new combined living and dining space and into the kitchen. This subterranean space is no longer dark, flowing on from the reimagined room with exaggerated proportionality and vast hanging walls for the client’s extensive art collection.

In addition to providing a visual connection to the front addition, the brick blade walls form deep reveals that shade and allow for the flush opening of tall steel-framed doors onto the courtyard. These also ensure a comfortable temperature year-round for the space, keeping the hot summer out while allowing the lower winter sun in. Brick was the natural choice for the new addition for a sensitive response to the Sydney streetscape. The Corso brick complements the painted rendered walls of the heritage area yet reads in a contemporary way. The new brickwork lightly touches the existing masonry, a strip of glazing running in between the two elements.

Environmentally sensitive elements were stitched into the old and new parts of the house, including hydronic floor heating and cooling, natural cross ventilation and avoidance of air-conditioning, exploitation of good solar orientation, thermally massive construction, and heat-exchange technology. Contemporary insertions are clearly expressed within the interiors, made using understated materials and fine details to ensure they sit comfortably within the heritage spaces. The clean lines and minimal detailing of the Corian kitchen provide contrast to the existing textured sandstone walls at lower ground level. A custom steel bookshelf is similarly finely crafted and solid yet decidedly modern.

A lawn, splash pool, and paved area for entertaining were accommodated within a relatively small footprint while maintaining rear-lane accessed garaging and storage. While the design was driven by functional requirements, it was resolved to sit elegantly within the bays defined by the brick blades of the back elevation. Each element within the intricate puzzle is considered to make up an attractive yet hardworking whole from the courtyard that steps down to accommodate parking at a lower less unobtrusive level to the bluestone and marble-lined pool.

Lena House Project Details

Architects: Smart Design Studio
Area: 367 m²
Year: 2019
Photographs: Romello Pereira
Quantity Surveyors: Qs Plus

written by : Hana Abdel
1 Sep 2021
published in : archdaily.com

Gallery of Lena House by Smart Design Studio

Bundeena House – Tribe Studio Architects

Bundeena House - Tribe Studio Architects

Tribe Studio Architects has unveiled their latest residential project, a single-story holiday house in the beachside hamlet of Bundeena, located south of Sydney in the Royal National Park. The design for the home doubles a replicable architectural prototype for a sustainable holiday home that is authentic to the Australian aesthetic, whilst also being cost-effective, environmentally aware and supportive of local trades. Developed as a weekender, the pared-back timber courtyard home nods to the modest fisher-cottages prevalent in the area and celebrates its native garden setting. It is an understated economical achievement with high levels of architectural and environmental integrity.

“This house is a retreat from busy city lives that encourages a slower way of living by the beach. It is a garden and cooking focused holiday home and a place where children and adults are connected,” explains Hannah Tribe, principal of Tribe Studio Architects.

Situated 100-metres from Gunyah beach, the block has seven adjoining neighbours, making its context both coastal and suburban. Tribe chose not to pursue a double-storey home to capture water views, in favour of tackling the larger challenge of creating an affordable and sustainable prototype home, with the potential to be recreated across a variety of environments – from beach and bush to suburban estates.

“We could have had glorious views from a second storey, however we felt that reinforcing the local vernacular of single-storey timber cottages was important, and that an introspective garden diagram was preferable to outward-looking in this context,” recalls Hannah. “This house is an attempt to achieve a high level of architectural and sustainable outcomes at a low cost. It is an experiment in delivering a more thoughtful kit home”.

Planned around an internal courtyard, the U-shaped form responds to multiple orientations. The mathematical rigour and strict organisational framework starts with a concrete slab and modular timber frame that cleverly achieves large spans of up to 5.4 metres without structural steel. Living and sleeping spaces wrap around the courtyard and face north to the rear garden. Two adults’ bedrooms and a kids’ room that can sleep up to six children means the home is ample for a family of four and – with built-in sofas that double as beds in the lounge – easily accommodates up to twelve when friends come to stay. In lieu of a mudroom, pushing the laundry and bathroom to the entry threshold is a deliberate sand trap for beach towels, tossed togs, wetsuits and thongs.

Internally, a relaxed and raw aesthetic contrasts the architectural rigour. Materials are durable and honest. The timber used throughout is certified plantation. Laminated veneer lumber (LVLs) and structural ply ceilings are clear matt finished revealing their knots and imperfections. There is no plasterboard, just crisply painted timber walls and hardwood window joinery in Australian Blackbutt. The finish on the structural concrete floor is unpolished so that wet and sandy footprints are a non-issue. While the house is conceived as a prototype kit-home, it also reflects some particularities of the site. The front façade is windowless in response to street geometry and approaching headlights. The external blank wall frames an exquisite existing Queensland bottle tree. Setbacks are determined by other mature trees on-site and relationships with neighbours.

Tribe engaged landscape architect Christopher Owen to enhance the garden. His landscape plan fosters natives and endemic species that attract bird life including kookaburras, tawny frogmouths, cockatoos, fairy-wrens and sea eagles. The only non-indigenous plants are edibles. These were originally dispersed throughout the garden but have been moved in an attempt to deter roaming deer from grazing. Now the courtyard is the ‘food bowl’ of the house.

Sustainable measures embedded in Tribe’s philosophy are expressed throughout this house. Eschewing structural steel was both an eco- and budget-friendly choice. Passive cooling and heating are achieved through the thermal mass of the concrete slab and by orienting the house to prevailing cooling breezes. All windows are double glazed and lightweight walls are heavily insulated. Adding adjustable shading to east and west windows as well as awnings to north-facing windows reduces solar gain. As a result, there is no need for air-conditioning, just ceiling fans in the bedrooms.

The highly efficient French Philippe Chemise fireplace became a justifiable extravagance given it heats the entire house. Lighting is all LED. A 5kw photovoltaic array, separate solar hot water, and provision for a future battery leans the home toward electrical self-reliance. Rainwater harvesting and recycling to all WCs, washing machines and garden irrigation makes the home water-wise. This step-less house is also socially sustainable, designed so the owners can happily age-in-place and to suit any limited mobility needs of occupants and visitors.

Bundeena House Project Details

Architects: Tribe Studio Architects
Year: 2020
Photographs: Katherine Lu
Builders: Ballast Construction, George Payne
Landscaping: Christopher Owen Landscape Design

written by : Hana Abdel
1 Sep 2021
published in : archdaily.com

Gallery of Bundeena House by Tribe Studio Architects

Ensemble Apartments Kavellaris Urban Design

Ensemble Apartments by Kavellaris Urban Design

Text pdescription provided by Kavellaris Urban Design. Ensemble Apartments are a departure from the conventional stacked apartment design response. The horizontal building mass is divided by a bisecting vertical glass void which simultaneously, creates a strong and identifiable sense of address but also creates relief and a break to the built form.

The vertical glazed entry consists of a two-storey void upon arrival into the building which is experientially a counterpoint to the horizontal reading of the building. Moreover, the bronze glass visually contrasts the materiality of while fluted concrete to further create an identifiable visual connection to the entry of the building.

The lower section of the building incorporates white fluted concrete with large arched windows which creates articulation and visual interest. The large arched windows further reinforce the curved architectural language and also create interesting and engaging framed views from within the internal spaces.

The lower levels’ colour, geometry, and texture create a podium for the building mass that engages with a sympathetic human scale to avoid visual bulk. This intervention is further reinforced with the change in material, colour and geometry to create relief and contrast from the top-level clearly.

Ensemble Apartments Projectv Details

Architects: Kavellaris Urban Design
Area: 2935 m²
Year: 2021
Photographs: Veeral
Manufacturers: ASURCO, Aodeli
Structure Engineers: O’Neil Group
Services Engineers: O’Neil Group
Civil Engineers: O’Neil Group
Traffic Consultants: Traffix Group
ESD: Enrate
Landscape: John Patrick Landscape Architects

written by : Hana Abdel
27 Aug 2021
published in : archdaily.com

Gallery of Ensemble Apartments by Kavellaris Urban Design

Durbach Block Jaggers Designs Australia’s Thinnest Pencil Skyscraper

Durbach Block Jaggers Designs Australia's Thinnest Skyscraper: Pencil Tower Hotel Sydney

Australian architecture firm Durbach Block Jaggers has unveiled a design for the Pencil Tower Hotel in Sydney. Designed to be the country’s thinnest skyscraper, the project would rise at 410 Pitt Street with a height-to-width ratio of 16:1. With 173 hotel rooms with six suites on each floor, the 100-metre-high tower would be built in the downtown area with street frontage only 6.4 meters wide.

According to the team, the ‘pencil’ tower would rise on a low scale podium referencing the delicacy and detail of its heritage neighbors using the language of arching brickwork. A three story volume includes levels of lobby, cafe and lounge, visible through a large scale keyhole window, while a walled courtyard garden for shared use overlooks the street.
The tower was designed to simulate the compression and extension of a column through a continuous abstraction of its elements: base, shaft and capital. The capital is expressed as a flying balcony and shell curves of a rooftop sundeck, pool and “hammam” spa.

The designers explain that the facade would begin with compressed horizontal screening, slowly transforming into exaggerated verticals at the top. Horizontals begin wide and flush with the outside frame, slowly thinning and receding at the height of the tower.
“Each horizontal is at the height of the slab, handrail and door head height. Each floor houses compact hotel rooms, gathering light from the street, rear court or internal shapely voids. The voids are tiled to reflect light and colour into the rooms.” At the same time, keyhole windows would provide a framed vignette of the seamless tiled surface.

Pencil Tower Hotel Project Details

Sydney, Australia

Year: 2021
Architects: Durbach Block Jaggers
Images: Durbach Block Jaggers

written by : Eric Baldwin
28 Aug 2021
published in : archdaily.com

Brunswick Green House DOOD Studio

Brunswick Green House DOOD Studio

Text description provided by DOOD Studio. A once dark and confined house has been renovated and transformed into a light, bright family home. The owners bought the home in 2017 with a vision to create a beautiful home to grow their family in.

The plan was to live in the house while they renovated and extended. The brief from the client was to open and connect the space to the north-facing yard. The bones of the house were in reasonable condition, so the clients were keen to retain as much of the existing footprint as possible.

Access to natural light was paramount. The addition is a deliberate contrast to the front of the house, featuring dark recycled cladding and recycled red brickwork. A minimalist kitchen is light and bright; a huge transformation from the dark low ceilings of the original house.

Brunswick Green House Project Details

Architects: DOOD Studio
Area: 270 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs: Tatjana Plitt

written by : Hana Abdel
14 Aug 2021
published in : archdaily.com

Gallery of Brunswick Green House by DOOD Studio

CL28 Monash University Learning Spaces Kennedy Nolan Architects

CL28 Monash University Learning Spaces by Kennedy Nolan Architects

Text description provided by Kennedy Nolan Architects. The ‘Centrally Managed Teaching and Maths Learning Centre’ (CL28) is a series of formal and informal learning spaces within an existing building at Monash University. The informal spaces were to offer flexible and social spaces that facilitate student engagement, places to encourage learning, creativity, collaboration and engagement with community and industry.

The brief required student lounges that could cater for a diverse range of student types – introvert, extrovert, solo workers, group workers, students working in a formal or relaxed fashion. Our approach was to consider how furniture types and arrangements could support in intimate or convivial formats and to make provision for alcoves with soft acoustics and lower lighting as a refuge from more social spaces. Another key briefing requirement was to deliver a design that felt specific to the department of mathematics and earth, atmosphere and environments, but not is so overt as to render the facilities redundant if they were required for another faculty or student cohort. Accordingly, references are coded and subtle.

Monash is motivated to provide facilities to encourage students to feel safe and supported on campus – to provide places for students for informal study and somewhere to be between classes and thus promote a vibrant campus life. Accordingly, our design aims for warmth and, within the constraints of Monash’s strict guidelines on performance and durability, a sense of domesticity as a respite from the institutional. We have deployed timber for texture and warmth, and upholstered furniture for a sense of cosiness and familiarity. The project has had a broader effect on the campus too – radically opening up the previously blank walls of the university server and presenting a warm and reassuring lightbox at a key entry point to the campus from the main car park. The design achieves a strong and important connection to the adjacent landscape and wider university community both physically and visually.

The new design expression is responsive to the existing building’s austere, functional modernism – rational planning, cartesian geometry and a limited material and colour palette. Embedded in this design approach is a close reading of the user groups, with elements that are familiar and engaging, but not so obvious that they would alienate other users. Examples of this approach include the new glazed facades which incorporate playful mullion geometry which are also mathematical symbols, and an entry portal which is an abstraction of the Pi symbol. The use of graph-paper gridlines on internal glazing and whiteboards softens their appearance and also provides a useful armature for calculations, while the colour scheme references the graph paper used by students in the faculty.

CL28 Monash University Project Details

Architects: Kennedy Nolan Architects
Area: 1100 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs: Derek Swalwell
Lead Architects: Rachel Nolan, Patrick Kennedy

written by : Hana Abdel
25 Aug 2021
published in : archdaily.com

Gallery of CL28 Monash University by Kennedy Nolan Architects

Bones House Lachlan Shepherd Architects

Bones House / Lachlan Shepherd Architects

Text description provided by Lachlan Shepherd Architects. Positioned on a hilltop overlooking the iconic Bells Beach Surfing Reserve, the Bones House involved alterations and additions to the existing dilapidated 3 bedroom residence on site.

The existing footprint was largely re-used, with components of the original dwelling retained, whilst at the same time, completely re-imagining the building. The brief called for a refined home with a highly detailed application of material, but with a comfortable, warm aesthetic.

The response was to utilize an earthy, textural palette to harmonize with the surrounding environs, essentially appearing as though the “re-imagined” building had always been there.

Architects: Lachlan Shepherd Architects
Area: 265 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs: Nic Stephens Photography
Builder: Torquay Homes Pty Ltd

written by: Hana Abdel
19 َAug 2021
published in: archdaily.com

Gallery of Bones House by Lachlan Shepherd Architects

JARtB House Kavellaris Urban Design

JARtB House / Kavellaris Urban Design

Text description provided by Kavellaris Urban Design Architects. JARtB House reconnects the abandoned notion that Art and Architecture are separate, techne. Part House and part Art Gallery, the synthesis of the two typologies are redefined into a singular expression. A new hybrid is institutionalized.
Art is used to connect, inform and program space instead of the program containing it. Art is not defined as ‘in’ or ‘on’ the building, the building is the artifact Architecture and Art cannot be separated!

Art moves beyond cultural expression and becomes architectural syntax. Ornamentation becomes more than architectural decoration, more than Venturi’s Decorated Shed or Duck. JARtB House becomes the Alchemy of the ‘Decorated Duck’ expressed in an urban Neo-Baroque paradigm.

A controlled chaos of interlocking geometric forms sculpts the facade to cultivate theatrical drama. The façade is internalized and redefined. External facades become internal translucent frescos. A two-way façade typology emerges.

Non-spaces of circulation are redefined into a delineated linear programmatic pure white ‘strip’ traversing the entire length of the site envelope. The art gallery is born. Double height spaces, interlocking volumes and visual links are connected through Art. Art informs architecture and program, Art becomes an architectural element, Art now has utility.

JARtB House becomes liveable art.

JARtB House Project Details

Architects: Kavellaris Urban Design
Area: 525 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs: Peter Bennetts
Manufacturers: Connected Living, Digiglass, Lights & tracks, Modcons, Parthenon Marble
Lead Architect: Billy Kavellaris
ESD Consultant: Enrate
Land Surveyor: BPD
Structure: O’Neil Group

written by: Hana Abdel
19 Aug 2021
published in: archdaily.com

Gallery of JARtB House by Kavellaris Urban Design

Nielsen Jenkins designs Brisbane home to withstand bushfires

Mt Coot-Tha House by Nielsen Jenkins

Australian studio Nielsen Jenkins has completed a “tough” family home with lush green courtyards protected from extreme bushfires by high blockwork walls.
Mt Coot-Tha House sits on a challenging site characterised by a steep slope at the foot of Mt Coot-Tha, in the suburb Brisbane of Bardon.

Faced with the requirements of the second-highest bushfire attack level (BAL40), the local studio designed the home as a series of low, sloping units linked by a triple-height, “civic-scaled” staircase block that steps up the forested site.

“An efficient stairway axis at the scale of the gum forest runs directly into the contour, and an informal meandering path across the plan allows for functional plateaus or occupiable contours,” Nielsen Jenkins explained.

This layout provides a garage at ground floor level, a large living, dining and kitchen area on the first floor and an area for the main bedrooms on the second floor.

Due to the steepness of the slope, the first floor features a series of smaller level changes, stepping up from a living area and balcony towards a kitchen overlooked by a large internal courtyard.

Mt Coot-Tha House Materials

“These smaller sectional shifts allow a grounded courtyard space adjacent to the living area of the house becomes a kind of ‘village green’ around which the rituals of daily life are lived,” described the studio.
The sloping rooflines on each block follow the site’s slope upwards, each clad with corrugated metal atop a blockwork base.

All of these material choices, as well as those in the interior, were made in accordance with the BAL40 rating, which also necessitated that the gaps around openings be no greater than three millimetres.

“Robust and prosaic materials have been detailed in a manner which will require no maintenance moving forward and will let the building continue to settle into the hill over time,” explained Nielsen Jenkins.

Internally, the central staircase form’s exposed blockwork is contrasted by white walls and wooden floors and furniture.

Taking advantage of the frequent changes in level, a mix of high panoramic windows, skylights, and carefully framed openings aim to capture the feeling of “leaning back” to look at the forest. The apertures are aligned with the tree trunks on the lower levels and the canopy on the upper level.

Around the house’s perimeter, a series of “wet walls” have been pulled away to deal with overland water flow, doubling as small, flat courtyard areas that mimic clearings in the densely vegetated forest.

Mt Coot-Tha home was recently longlisted in the rural house category of this year’s Dezeen Awards.

Other nominated projects include a cave-like house by Mold Architects embedded into a hill overlooking the Mediterranean.

Details of Mt Coot-Tha Project by Nielsen Jenkins

Architecture: Nielsen Jenkins
Photography: Tom Ross
Build: Struss Constructions
Interior Design: Nielsen Jenkins

written by: Jon Astbury
19 Aug 2021
published in: dezeen.com

Banksia House Aphora Architecture

Banksia House / Aphora Architecture

Text description provided by Aphora Architecture. Drawing inspiration from the Banksia Integrifolia native to the site, the house responds to the challenges of living against the East coast of Australia. A robust, yet environmentally and economically focussed building, Banksia House emphasises the importance of custodianship through a heightened connection to ‘place’.

The initial sketch on-site mapped the existing trees on the block. Immediately we were intrigued by the native Banksia Integrifolia and its ability to withstand the harshest of coastal conditions. It thrives in poor quality and sandy soil types, can withstand bushfire and is capable of coping with insistent corrosive winds. This became a beautiful metaphor for the house and a framework from which to respond to the challenges of the site. Accordingly, this informed the building program, materiality and even detailing, resulting in a conscious and responsive building.

The built form is driven by a response to ecological systems – both human and non-human – native to the site. Consequently, the edge conditions of the building were carefully conceived and detailed as offerings to a broader context. High-level glazing heightens the connection to ever-changing weather patterns, time and the immediacy of flora and fauna.
Materials such as exposed blockwork, charred timber cladding, concrete and glazing were used to create a non-corrosive skin to the building and reducing the need for toxic paint finishes and continual upkeep by the client.

The exposed blockwork was used to form the structural spine of the house but is also vital to the thermal comfort of the building. Large masonry blades brace the structure whilst simultaneously directing and buffering prevailing coastal breezes. Careful attention was given to the calculation of the deep eaves (which were designed with sun path modelling) to shade the blockwork and glazing in the summer months, whilst in the cooler seasons, the blockwork and internal areas are exposed to the morning sun. The thermal massing provided by the blockwork and slab on the ground regulating the temperature throughout the day.
Each room was planned with, at minimum, 2 windows at opposite adjacencies – Operable facades at these apertures allow for cross-flow ventilation which can be regulated manually by the occupants. Timber batten privacy screening with insect mesh allows for the home to ‘breathe’ 24 hours a day as well as heightening a connection to the sounds of the coastal location.

In many ways, the building is a wonderful reflection of the generosity and spirit of the clients. Rather than occupy the entire block with hard edges, the building blurs the line between public and private realms. The hard landscaping edges and fencing are deliberately held back from the street as an offering to neighbours – in particular, families making their way to the beach access across the street – which we felt was the key cultural centrepiece of the locale. Rather than squeezing past hard surfaces on your way to the beach, neighbours can comfortably wander across the lawn, under the canopy of the Fig, Tuckeroos and Banksias which the house was carefully built amongst.

Banksia House Project Details

Architects: Aphora Architecture
Area: 320 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs: Andy Macpherson
Manufacturers: Abey, Eco Outdoor, Eco Timber, Fisher & Paykel, Caribou, Fibonnaci, MARZ, South Drawn
Lead Architect: Andrew Forsyth
Landscape Contractor: RESERVE Landscapes
Builder: JMG Build
Landscape Architect: LARC
Structural Engineer: Westera