Innehållsförteckning för Issue 143 December 2021 från Houses

Located in the suburb of Manly, nestled into the edge of Moreton Bay, Earl Parade Residence is tuned to its location, designed to enable its occupants to experience the coastal lifestyle of bayside Brisbane. The site for the new house was a relatively flat block, sandwiched between two other suburban properties, and the lack of character in the immediate surrounds gave Cavill Architects licence to shape the ground level into an undulating topography. The creation of an artificial rise and fall across the site was motivated in part by the practice’s aim to recuperate the city with nature, one site at a time. It was also a practical measure to direct overland flow and a means to create a lush garden environment at the heart of the property. For the…

Visitors to Tasmania’s Bruny Island will undoubtedly swoon over the pristine beaches and incredible rock formations, but they might also fall for the rural sheds and cottages that stand alone in the island’s paddocks, some immaculate strongholds of tin, others Georgian ruins of tin, timber and brick. FMD Architects’ overall approach to Coopworth, a new residence on South Bruny, was inspired by these humble buildings. The resulting design is, like the sheds themselves, deliberately simple and born from function, but it is also idiosyncratic, possessing a range of quirks that are aligned with site, use and occupant. Bruny Island is a place of both wildness and civilization, with one never far from the other. The site for Coopworth is a rural property on a gradual slope down toward Little Taylors…

FIRST HOUSE In the early days of our fledging studio, some of our first commissions came through close family and friends. Avoca Beach House (see Houses 86), on the New South Wales Central Coast, was designed for my aunt and uncle and was a particularly personal project. The lush site, towering with eucalyptus trees, was engrained with childhood memories of summer days spent at Avoca Beach and playing in the bush with my cousins, and so in designing a new home for the site, I was tasked with redefining a place that was already special to me. My aunt and uncle had owned the property – a modest, two-bedroom fibro shack – for more than 20 years. Though the original house no longer served the needs of the family, the…

When talking about the design of Mosman Minka, Cat Downie and Dan North describe their idea of curating a view, while simultaneously nurturing private spaces. The design of this house was spurred by the desire to live outside as much as possible and, consequently, the need for multiple ways to manage the elements, in particular the western sun. The pursuit of these ideas led them along a design path that was shaped not just by the immediate concerns of privacy, light and shade, but also by their own interests and experience. The original dwelling – a freestanding Federation bungalow in the Sydney suburb of Mosman – has been maintained toward the front to preserve the established relationship with the street. The front four rooms have been kept relatively intact, with…

In 1975, when Kessell House was completed, Iwan Iwanoff (1919–1986) was a prolific and successful architect in Perth, yet he was barely known outside of his adopted home. Born in Bulgaria, Iwanoff had arrived in Perth in 1950 as a well-trained Eastern European modernist and found an isolated city with a nascent design culture. At the time Perth was, on the whole, a conservative town, sceptical of non-Anglo “foreigners.” Despite this, Iwanoff established his career, employed initially as a hand at the local Boral concrete factory before working in notable architectural offices including Krantz and Sheldon in Perth followed by a stint at Yuncken Freeman in Melbourne. He began working on his own residential commissions from the mid-1950s and formalized his practice in 1963, when he opened The Studio of…

When homeowners Tim and Cinzia engaged Kart Projects to design a modest extension to their semidetached house in Melbourne’s Fairfield, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, there was an immediate, shared understanding about the family’s needs and the value of small, thoughtful additions to the existing fabric. Tim, who runs a digital design studio with Cinzia, recalls how Kart Projects directors Martin Musiatowicz and Karen Fermo “were very similar to us at the time: their business was a similar size to ours and I think we could really relate to each other.” The strong, collaborative relationship built between client and architect across the project has seen the original plan for a small extension and “tidy up” at the back of the house evolve into…

There is a rich sense of nostalgia in the work of Placement Studio. It plays out in lovingly crafted timber joinery, in immaculately laid brickwork, in spaces that evoke the warmth and comfort of an earlier time. To be clear, though, there is nothing ersatz about the studio’s work; rather, the houses Placement Studio creates are elegant, hard-working and designed for life in the twenty-first century. The studio was founded in 2019 by Stephanie Kitingan, Jacqueline O’Brien and James Flaherty, who first met under the watchful eye of Nest Architects director Emilio Fuscaldo. All three speak of how much their experience at Nest shaped the way they make architecture – not just their approach to design or the business of running a practice, but also the necessity of taking time…

Fitzroy, together with its neighbours Collingwood and Richmond, is one of Melbourne’s earliest suburbs – where the first suburban land allotments beyond the Melbourne town reserve were sold. South Fitzroy is layered with a rich tapestry of residential and industrial buildings, but it is known particularly for its attached, Victorian-era housing. An 1850 planning decision to mitigate fire risk led to a particularly high prevalence of masonry construction in South Fitzroy, and that legacy remains evident today. Fitzroy Bridge House is the end of a row of four two-storey terraced brick houses on Napier Street, built between 1880 and 1890. The house is subject to a heritage overlay as part of the South Fitzroy Precinct but is not itself heritage listed, making its street frontage individually significant but also making…

01 Aspen rug Armadillo’s rugs are made by hand from carefully sourced natural materials – a slow and sustainable process of craftsmanship. The Aspen rug has a quiet presence with its one-sided soumak weave creating a soft and linear texture inspired by alpine slopes. armadillo-co.com 02 Kata lounge chair Lightweight in both form and environmental footprint, Kata by Altherr Désile Park for Arper is a solid wood lounge chair that takes inspiration from wood and woven straw chairs. Its fabric is made from post-consumer plastic waste that is recycled and woven into yarn. stylecraft.com.au 03 Ceppo porcelain collection Ceppo by Earp Bros brings durability and sustainability to traditional Italian Ceppo di Gre stone. Requiring less water for their production than typical tiles, the Ceppo porcelain collection achieves Global Green Certified…

In Ashgrove in Brisbane’s inner west, Kieron Gait Architects (KGA) has achieved a genuinely surprising transformation of an existing house that occupies an arrestingly unusual site. Nestled into the southern base of Taylor Range, it’s part of a unique subdivision created in the early 1990s on a hillside initially intended as a quarry. With sites organically arrayed off a vertiginous easement, negotiation of terrain and outlook is idiosyncratic. In the absence of regular boundary geometries, houses splay and jostle as any sense of typical suburban order gives way to the dominance of the topography. Since taking up residence in 2013, homeowners Arne and Sandra had not altered their home significantly. Their brief to KGA was to create a more flexible space for them and their three children, while also making…

An enjoyable lesson from my architecture degree concerned the ways in which grades of private and public space could be articulated, and the understanding that variations between these states were arrived at through subtle manipulations of distance, level changes, screening and light. This learning has been reinforced over the years during discussions with architects about the way they scale designs for particular circumstances, with different dimensions used for conversation and socializing, solitude and separation. Working within the historical, city-fringe context of Battery Point in Hobart, Bence Mulcahy has arrived at a pleasing and perhaps surprising mix of these states in Fusilier Cottage Addition. Constructed in the late 1830s for the Scottish bandmaster of the 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers Regiment, Fusilier Cottage is a Georgian building with a few quirks. Built…

01 Accolade pavers Accolade by Urbanstone is a meticulously crafted small-format paver for the outdoors. It is cast from sand, stone and cement, rendering it resistant to the wear and tear associated with high-use outdoor areas. It is available in five colours inspired by the Australian landscape. brickworks.com.au 02 Il Colonnato outdoor table Furniture studio Kettall has re-issued the classic Il Colonnato table by Mario Bellini, originally released in 1977. Bellini’s design emulates the colonnade of classical architecture, in which a sequence of columns supports a portico – or, in this case, a tabletop. kettal.com 03 Ribbon outdoor collection New coffee, side and dining tables have been launched as part of Robert Plumb’s Ribbon collection. Based around a universal 50-millimetre powdercoated stainless steel flat bar concept, each Ribbon piece fits…

Queensland’s Gold Coast projects an image of a life spent under the sun, inhabiting golden sandy beaches that stretch along the edge of the Pacific Ocean. However, the experience of dwelling on the Gold Coast elicits a much richer and diverse way of life. The region shifts from the temperate climate of the mountainous hinterland to the beautiful sclerophyll and subtropical rainforest, a diverse landscape that co-exists with the rapid urbanization of a maturing city. In his pursuit of creating architecture that is quintessentially of this place, local practitioner Matthew Eagle has adapted architectural responses to embrace the vivid and variable landscapes of the Gold Coast. While the city is transforming from a regional tourism destination to a thriving entrepreneurial hub, Matt’s approach to residential architecture – which he describes…