Innehållsförteckning för Issue 128 June 2019 från Houses

As a visitor to Brisbane, I’ve noticed that the city’s body of residential architecture offers a greater sense of openness and generosity to the suburban streetscapes than elsewhere in the eastern states. This reflects the people who call Brisbane home and the balmy subtropical weather, which genuinely permits a life lived outside. A wonderful exemplar of this openness and generosity in design is an alteration and addition to a 1909 homestead by eminent Brisbane architect and artist Alexander Brown Wilson (1857–1938). Perched on a hilltop in the riverside suburb of Teneriffe, this home most recently functioned as a mental health hostel, modified from the original dwelling to sleep as many people as possible, including the enclosure of all the verandahs to create dormitories. The clients recognized that this old Queenslander…

Partners in life, business and design, Surya Graf and Lindy Shaw actively embrace life’s natural rhythms, a notion reflected in their aptly named design studio, Waltz. “It’s a bit emotive [the word, Waltz],” Lindy says. “You imagine two people engaged in a rhythmic dance, which seemed appropriate as it was about the two of us coming together to create something.” Surya and Lindy’s “coming together” was a natural merging of their two independent design careers. Surya began tertiary studies in psychology and architecture before moving to industrial design to pursue a more detail and process-driven vocation. He’s amassed fifteen years in the industry since graduation, creating furniture, product and industrial design objects at various scales, refining his knowledge of material and fabrication processes and strengthening his relationship with makers in…

Camp Hill House began as a modest interwar cottage located in Camp Hill, six kilometres south-east of the centre of Brisbane. The existing dwelling had a typical closely packed floor plan: living space to the south, flanked by bedrooms and a sleep-out to the north. Despite occupying a large block, the cottage had little direct connection to the outdoors, except for a small verandah on the south-west corner and a run of stairs from the rear of the house down to the backyard. The clients, a couple with two children, had purchased the cottage as their first home together back in 1993. With their children growing older and lifestyle preferences evolving, there was a need to expand the space to achieve differentiation, distance and independence while also making the most…

01 Mondo sofa Mondo is a solid, fixed-form sofa from Arthur G. The saddle-stitched lines tracing over the sofa’s form have been pulled in, creating a quilted seat and back, and resulting in a dynamic play of light and shade. Made in Melbourne, Mondo has a Victorian ash frame. arthurg.com.au 02 Quill side table Alexander Lamont’s Quill side table in striated onyx marble – part of the Peninsula collection – is designed to evoke nature’s erosive forces. Raised on gently curving legs, the honed and waxed table surface is full of sophistication and character. alexanderlamont.com 03 Lehenga side table Lehenga, by Melbourne designer Helen Kontouris of Len, is a distinctive side table inspired by Indian dance. It takes its design cues from traditional Lehenga skirts, capturing the movement of the…

The first thing to note about this fine house by architecture practice ME is the subtlety with which it occupies its address in Currumbin Waters on the Gold Coast. Facing the street is a series of low walls: timber giving way to carefully punctuated fields of concrete block. The trees at the back of the site loom over a low roof profile that belies the generous scale of the dwelling below it. In a city famous for its gauche towers and bloated houses, the moves made in the design of ME’s Tierney Drive House to secure privacy and foster spaces of provisional enclosure stand out. To be fair, this is not a beach house, nor does it boast a canal-side mooring. At some remove from the action, so to speak,…

All exhibitions have a starting point. In the case of the architectural exhibition Home: A Suburban Obsession, it was the 1995 donation to the State Library of Queensland of more than 60,000 discarded prints, rescued from the under-house of husband-and-wife photographic team Frank and Eunice Corley. Crafting a meaningful exhibition with these images, celebrating “the allure of home and the stories found within,” is nothing short of triumphant. The Corleys’ Pan-American Home Photographic Co. operated in South East Queensland in the late 1960s and ‘70s. The 60,000-plus prints are the unsold remains of some 250,000 photographs of houses taken with Frank’s Leica camera. He’d trawl the suburbs in his pink open-top Cadillac, precariously but expertly “steering with his knees.” Eunice, ensuing in their Bedford van photographic laboratory, developed postcard-sized black-and-white…

Folk Architects has named its renovation of an inner-city Melbourne terrace the “Storybook House.” The name largely comes from its new rear facade and steeply pitched roof form, clad in vanilla and cream glazed terracotta shingles. The resultant form echoes scenes from childhood storybooks. Internally, the space is dotted with playful details: the arched entry to the living room, the graphic outline of the asymmetrical rangehood, the peach terrazzo tiles in the bathroom and the olive-green upholstery lining the banquette sofa. These materials and details inspire a childlike delight. The house is also riddled with trap doors and secret compartments. Clothes lines and ironing boards emerge from behind tiny doors, each element unfolding like a rabbit out of a hat. The projector is tucked between exposed floor joists, appearing to…

01 Cast wall sconce Expanding on Menu’s Cast light series, designers Tom Chung and Jordan Murphy have created a “small but mighty” shade concept for wall applications. The Cast wall sconce unites triangular, linear and round elements to create a sophisticated geometric silhouette. menu.as 02 T Model lamp Anour’s T Model, designed by architect Arash Nourinejad, is a finely crafted minimalist lamp. It features a tilting lampshade, with an integrated touch dimmer, and comes in three brass finishes: polished, brushed and browned. Fred International is the Australian stockist. fredinternational.com.au 03 Honey pendant Honey is a lighting collection designed by Coco Flip and made in Melbourne. It includes a pendant light, table lamp and wall sconce. Honey takes cues from the soft curves of a wooden honey dipper, and its stepped…

A reverence for the coastal and mountainous landscapes of South East Queensland was one of the reasons Dan Sparks was enticed to the Sunshine Coast after graduating in architecture from Brisbane’s University of Queensland in 2001. The decision to establish a home with fellow graduate of architecture and life partner, Margo Reardon (now Sparks), somewhere between the pristine coastline and captivating hinterland was more intuitive than calculated. The move was cemented by an offer for Dan to join the studio of Gabriel and Elizabeth Poole. Dan was exposed to architectural process through the work of the studio, developing construction technologies and pursuing sustainable practices. The experience of living short term at Lake Weyba House (designed by Gabriel and Elizabeth Poole Design Company in 1996) immersed him in the work, enabling…

Picture a street in Rome, Mexico City or Kyoto – a place where houses look nothing like they do here. Instead of hipped roofs and wide verges, suburban fences and setback lawns, there is the elemental offering of a strong, defensive wall. In each of these cities, these walls may look and feel different – they may be coloured or rendered or assembled with fine timber screens – but their purpose is the same. They are there to protect the life of the home, to create a place of retreat and to keep the constant bustle of city life at bay. At their core, they often hold gardens, which provide light, air, outlook and a sense of tranquillity. There are certain building types that are universal and one of these…

There is nothing ostentatious about this house. At first glance it’s not obvious that a renovation has occurred at all; the single-fronted Victorian heritage facade remains intact, complete with leadlight sidelights in the window and original door knocker. Peeking out from behind the ornate parapet, however, is the second floor addition, which has been key to comfortably housing a family of four on this 138-square-metre block. “We were very lucky that one of the immediate neighbours had already received approval to construct a second floor,” says architect Rob Kennon. “Not every single-fronted Victorian terrace can be transformed in this way. It was the existing height precedent that made it possible.” With council requiring the facade and chimney to be retained and protected, the strategy for the project was a straightforward…

01 Kintsugi tableware Seletti’s Kintsugi tableware collection by Marcantonio has been expanded with the addition of bowls and glasses. The collection draws on the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a golden lacquer. The resulting pieces are given imperfect, individual forms. seletti.it 02 Puro Eclectic lights New to Brokis in 2019 is the Puro Eclectic suspended lighting collection. Designed by Brokis’ art director, Lucie Koldova, Puro Eclectic is composed of adjustable, hand-blown glass tubes, arranged diagonally and interconnecting to create a linearly dynamic lighting feature, ideal for dining spaces. brokis.cz 03 Liz chair Liz by Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba pays homage to silver screen icon Elizabeth Taylor. Liz is composed of an elastic fabric clinging tightly to a metallic tubular structure, highlighting delicate curves. The Liz chair is…

The verandah is a cherished place in Australian folklore. Paintings, poetry and literature idolize a life spent semi-outdoors, hobnobbing over beverages. But while the sight of tea sipping and biscuit eating out on the verandah is an increasingly rare affair in contemporary cities, it is still common in many of Australia’s regional towns, including Port Fairy in south-west Victoria, which in 2012 was named the world’s most liveable town with a population under 20,000. It is precisely this verandah culture that Melbourne practice Sibling Architecture drew on for its design of a pair of houses in the coastal town. Sibling director and Port Fairy expatriate Nicholas Braun led the team to design the twin houses for his sister, Kristan, who had purchased a vacant site of subdivided land just off…

From beyond the property’s weathered, grey Oregon fence, Hawthorn House by Edition Office presents as a beautifully textured concrete box, its interior apparently carved out by a sweeping, almost improbably wide, arch at ground level. At a stretch, one might even be able to catch a glimpse of a second box that sits further back on the site. In the first instance, then, we are prompted to read the home as two cubes sitting in stark contrast to their surroundings. Past the front gate, however, the uncompromising geometry of the home’s street elevation gives way to a set of much more complex architectural ideas. On entry, along the site’s southern edge, the monolithic concrete shroud on each cube can be seen to be one of several layers, which wrap effortlessly…

Collaborative duos come in many forms,but it is relatively rare to see siblings working together in the design realm. Lydia and André Hnatojko credit the strength of their collaboration to being able to “fight well.” They are trained, respectively, in architecture and industrial design, and their prolific creative skills have come together in a lighting and furniture venture named Laal (a simple mirroring of their first initials). The studio is relatively young, but has already produced eight collections intended for residential or commercial projects. Lydia describes the aesthetic of their pieces as a clear fusion between their personalities; Andrė enjoys bold, sculptural outcomes, while she is more focused on materiality and the delicate and detailed aspects of the work. An obvious example from their portfolio, and an early favourite with…

When originally published in Houses back in 1998 (see issue 16), the Droga Apartment was presented with the headline “Zinc Slink.” There have been many articles written about this iconic project by Durbach Block Jaggers (then Durbach Block Architects), and most reviews have drawn on a range of analogies to capture its poetic expression: a sunning lizard, a slug, twisting bodies, a sleek cat, something with an uplifted head and scales, even a ship slicing through surf. The Droga Apartment was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture and the Wilkinson Award for Residential Architecture in 1998 (which marked the first time the practice received these accolades). Since then, Durbach Block Jaggers (DBJ) has established itself as one of Australia’s most important design-based architectural firms,…