Hide House by MRTN Architects

Hide House by MRTN Architects

Resembling a traditional bird watching hide, Hide House tucks its occupants away into a fire-resistant encasing shell, looking outwards and protected from the elements. MRTN Architects takes reference from the site’s topography and proposes a sweeping form that optimises views and a connection to place.

Sitting elevated over expansive plains, Hide House is located in Venus Bay and sits amongst soft undulating sand dunes. The sweeping form allows the predominant winds to brush past the home easily, uniquely responding to the terrain and directing views outward. In the same way, as bird or animal hide allows a safe and protected passage from which to engage with nature, the home is conceived from a similar origin, allowing owners and guests to feel immersed without feeling revealed to the elements. The combined use of textural and natural timber allows the volume to patina and age in place, fitting tonally with the surrounding dunes.

MRTN Architects brings a contemporary crispness to the rural and removed home, ensuring the elevated structure sits unassumingly in its setting.

Built by Kane Worthy Constructions, Hide House is divided into two main forms. A rectilinear base acts as the home’s foundation, covered in the same fire-resistant timber as the upper level, which then curves out towards the views over Andersons Inlet to the northeast. As a second home away from Melbourne, the owners can utilise the retreat as a place to disassociate from the city, embracing nature and even working remotely. Needing to open and flexibly change during popular seasons throughout the year, the spaces are planned to allow for expansion and contraction and zoning when family and friends visit.

Integral to the experience of the home is its views. Hide House has a front-row seat to the natural changes throughout the year. Resultingly, the structure tucks itself into the existing vegetation as much as possible, with smaller curated openings for viewing. Instead of proposing an outdoor space that would sit exposed, the dining and kitchen space open with built-in balcony railings to replicate the idea of an exposed deck.

A sense of containment within the whole is then reinforced, while an open connectedness encourages natural ventilation to pass through the home. As an extension of its remoteness, the structure sits protected from bushfires with its sustainably harvested and milled silvertop ash. Rainwater is harvested on site and the home’s energy is not connected to mains but, rather, self-sustained.

Hide House is a unique insertion into the Venus Bay landscape. Through the careful recreation of a traditional hide on a much larger scale, MRTN Apartments has crafted an ideal place to engage with nature.

Hide House Project Details

PHOTOGRAPHY Dave Kulesza
STYLING MRTN Architects
ARCHITECTURE MRTN Architects
INTERIOR DESIGN MRTN Architects
BUILD Kane Worthy Constructions

written by : Bronwyn Marshall
31 Aug 2021
published in : thelocalproject.com.au

Gallery of Hide House by MRTN Architects

Living Screen House – CplusC Architectural Workshop

Living Screen House by CplusC Architectural Workshop

Text description provided by CplusC Architectural Workshop. The stunning single-family residence located in North Bondi was designed both for easy entertaining and private family time. A narrow site with overlooking issues paired with a commitment to passive solar design and natural daylighting drove much of the resulting form. Due to the nature of the site, planning and time management was crucial in ensuring the project ran smoothly.

Conceptually, the spatial planning of the house separates the social and family spaces. Downstairs, the interconnected kitchen, living, dining and outdoor spaces create a highly interactive and engaged site designed to accommodate large groups. A unique above ground lap-pool that shares a clear wall with the social spaces acts as a visual connection between the interior and exterior spaces, refracting natural light throughout the house.

Pool

The pool was originally designed as a fully concrete structure and was adjusted to incorporate the striking acrylic wall after construction had commenced. A wide range of trades was involved in delivering the pool, including interstate specialist sub-contractors. The acrylic wall required that waterproofing was discretely integrated with the panels and structural columns to provide a smooth visual effect. This required a high degree of coordination and negotiation to bring together, as the tolerances were very tight.

Vertical Garden

Upstairs, the bedrooms overlook private green space in the form of either a yard or a vertical garden. The feature screens and custom planter beds ensure privacy from neighbours and pedestrian traffic and are fully plumbed, self-maintained and LED-lit. This project marked the first time the firm had used FRP screens as a facade material, and a certain amount of on-site experimentation was required to determine the best method of assembly and fixing.

The panels required a high level of preparation before installation, pre-drilling the holes to fix the custom FRP panels from the side with dual threaded screws. Coordination of the plumbing, lighting and landscaping was crucial for delivering this intricate system. In addition to resolving privacy issues, these planter screens enable additional landscaping possibilities on a narrow site.

Home Automation System

The home automation system incorporates a fully programmable Dali and Cbus system. The client is able to select from a wide range of pre-programmed lighting and audio settings, as well as set up their own custom ‘scenes’ to be operated with a single touch. It is also possible to activate fixtures remotely.

Materials

The craftsmanship of the build is elegantly revealed in the material palette, which includes unfinished Kobe boards, burnished concrete, expressed timber, Corten facade and steel and timber columns that celebrate the structural systems in the house. The decision to leave the materials exposed significantly increased the complexity of the build, as any flaws or short cuts in construction would be visible in the finished structure. Additionally, the primary timber/steel flitch structure that is expressed both inside and out resulted in extremely limited tolerances for cladding, lining and window installations, further adding to the construction challenge.

CplusC Architectural Project Details

Architects: CplusC Architectural Workshop
Area: 344 m²
Year: 2016
Photographs: Murray Fredericks, Clinton Cole, Michael Lassman, Ryan Ng, Jem Cresswell
Manufacturers: James Hardie Australia, Breezway, Caesarstone, Cemintel, Dulux, Ezarri, Lysaght, Polytec, Precision Flooring, RMS Marble, Skheme, Timbeck, western red cedar, Access Concrete, Aquaplex, Bondi Kitchens, Escenium HAUS, Fenix Interiors, Formply, Galloway Engineering, +9
Landscape Specialist: Junglefy
Lighting Consultant: Electrolight
Structural Engineer: SDA Structures

written by : Fernanda Castro
11 Apr 2021
published in : archdaily.com

Gallery of Living Screen House by CplusC Architectural Workshop

Anne Street Garden Villas – AOG Architects

Anne Street Garden Villas - AOG Architects

Text description provided by AOG Architects. Anne Street Garden Villas is a series of 7 social housing dwellings in Southport on the Gold Coast. The design was informed by ideas from our Density and Diversity Done Well Open Idea Competition entry, as well as stakeholder workshops and local social housing design reviews.

Anne Street Garden Villas is one of ten social housing demonstration projects being delivered by a collaborative partnership between the Housing Partnerships Office, Building Asset Services, and the Office of the Queensland Government Architect. The demonstration projects will inform the new design guidelines for future social housing in Queensland.

To create liveable, forward-thinking social housing, we were encouraged to challenge conventions of social housing and employ small design moves that we thought could have a big impact – especially when it came to giving tenants a sense of ownership over their residence.

In high-density social housing developments, tenants do not always feel settled in their own homes. There are so many small signals – like the large carpark fronting the street – that give the development an institutional feel. This not only makes it challenging for tenants to feel ownership and pride about their home, but it also creates a divide between the complex and the rest of the neighborhood.

Our initial feelings about this problem were confirmed via a series of human-centered design workshops. In these workshops, current social housing tenants revealed a clear desire for nesting and being part of a community, while still having the sense of autonomy we get from a traditional freestanding home.
With these findings in mind, we looked for ways to make the experience of entering the Anne Street Garden Villas more akin to the experience of coming home in the traditional sense. To facilitate this, we made 4 key design decisions.

Anne Street Garden Villas Project Details

Architects: AOG Architects
Area: 1220 m²
Year: 2021
Photographs: Christopher Frederick Jones
Landscape Architect: Lat 27
Town Planners: Bennett & Bennett
Builder: Nano Construction Pty Ltd

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

Gallery of Anne Street Garden Villas by AOG Architects

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

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