Innehållsförteckning för Issue 145 April 2022 från Houses

This issue of Houses features stories about familiar housing types – from the Queenslander to the Victorian terrace and the semidetached cottage – that have been revitalized with inventive new layers that sit in harmony with the original. In Studio Bright’s Autumn House (cover and page 54), a confident addition grafted onto a Melbourne terrace is a cohesive new chapter for this storied home. In Harley Graham Architects’ Phoenix House (page 62), a dilapidated Queenslander is dismantled and its parts salvaged, enabling a joyous home to rise from the ashes. A continuity with built history is paired with a strong desire for familial connection in Sibling Architecture’s Stable House (page 20). This new home, built within the vestiges of a brick stable, is part of an ongoing project to establish…

Josh Harris You’ve been living in the house on this property – designed by architect Gabriel Poole – for around 10 years. When did you decide to commission an additional, separate studio for the site, and how did you connect with Bark Architects? Simone Browne I met Lindy and Steve when they opened their studio for Sunshine Coast Open House in 2018, before COVID–19. We’re very local – our house is just down the road from their studio. We had a good conversation, connected, and then in the following year, we looked at building our “tree house” and so we went to see Lindy and Steve. JH Was it important for you to work with a local architect? SB It was, I think. Bark Architects know the area and, being…

Rows of terraced houses make up much of the built character of Melbourne’s inner-north. Anyone who has lived in these parts will be familiar with their decorated facades, their linear plan and their propensity to trade access to daylight and connection to the outdoors for the benefits of density and location. These houses have had a varied history; built to varying degrees of quality by land speculators, they accommodated a diverse community in their early years but became stigmatized as slum housing by the early twentieth century. In the 1970s, groups such as Fitzroy Housing Repair Advisory Service (whose founders included architects Suzanne Dance, Peter Elliott and Peter Lovell) encouraged people to appreciate and maintain them again. Modest and inventive renovations subsequently emerged, often warm and woody homes with temperamental…

Tom Skeehan, founder of Skeehan Studio, is insatiably curious about the materials and processes in design or, put simply, what things are made from and how they are made. The Canberra-based designer, who started out in carpentry, cabinet-making and woodworking, has a detail-focused mind that drives him to explore new ideas and innovations in furniture design. “London-based designer Benjamin Hubert has a beautiful mantra: ‘material driven, process led.’ I’ve always looked up to his work throughout my career,” Tom says. “A lot of what we try to do is to slow down the design process and actually have the opportunity to play, to meet with our manufacturers and to form relationships where we can trust them and they can push us to explore new ways of bending timber, or more…

Jack Lovel Photographer Jack Lovel is an architectural photographer based in Melbourne but often found photographing projects in his home town of Perth. For the past five years, he has been documenting the architectural legacy of Iwan Iwanoff, culminating in the publication of his first book, Catching Light (2021). Penny Craswell Writer Penny Craswell is a Sydney-based writer. She is the author of Design Lives Here: Australian interiors, furniture and lighting (2020) and Reclaimed: New homes from old materials (forthcoming, 2022). She is a former editor of Artichoke magazine and her blog is The Design Writer. Linda Cheng Writer Linda Cheng is the editor of ArchitectureAU.com. She is a contributor to a number of Australian architecture and design publications, including Houses, Artichoke and Architecture Australia. Andy Macpherson Photographer Andy Macpherson…

Architects can be dreamers or artists, inventors or technicians. Rarely are they all four, but some come close to that illusive coupling of logic and instinct. Sydney architect Charlotte Fayle might be one. I met Charlotte, founder of Taro Studio, at her home – Keep Cabin House – on a clear summer morning. Sunlight streamed through the front garden, where concrete cylinders were host to thriving veggies in among a heath of flowering endemic trees and shrubs. Her comportment is different from a lot of architects I’ve met, and she snaps to life when talking about her garden. “I wasn't really a plant person until this project,” she says. “But now I'm obsessed with gardens, and native plants in particular. I can’t believe I ever wanted to plant a lavender…

The global financial crisis was just beginning to make ripples in Tasmania when my fellow co-founders and I decided to move on from our current employment to start Cumulus. This apparent anti-timing for establishing our studio was complemented by our lack of projects, prospective clients or an office, as well as our geographical separation – my wife Jenn Heggarty and I were in Launceston, while Kylee Scott and Peter Walker were in Hobart. But instead of being a hindrance, this distance nurtured a space for constant and open conversations during early project development and collaboration. We shared our perspectives on design and function, and engaged in robust discussions on particular door handle choices – and we learned constantly (mostly at night and during long Skype calls), all of which fit…

When architect Jimmy Thompson saw a 256-square-metre block listed for sale in North Perth – as he prepared to fly home from an overseas trip – he sketched out a design on the plane and purchased the block shortly thereafter. As design director at MJA Studio, which has offices in Perth and Melbourne, Jimmy has made a significant contribution to multiresidential developments as well as the ongoing conversation around density and amenity in Perth, a city widely known for its urban sprawl and car dependency. For this project – the first house he has designed for himself and his partner – he wanted to present an alternative to typical subdivisions, which have doubled the density in Perth’s established suburbs while significantly reducing the tree canopy and biodiversity. Jimmy drew inspiration…

Architecture, space and the city are rich subjects for artistic practice. The Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art’s tenth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art is a future-focused edition, encompassing work by more than 150 individual artists from 30 countries in the Asia Pacific region. The curatorial statement introduces a show that is “rich with stories of how to navigate through time and space, reimagine histories and explore connections to culture and place.” With this remit, it makes absolute sense that several of the works in the show have overlapping themes with architecture and the built environment. Three artists in particular deal with questions of architecture and space through three-dimensional form. Iranian artist Nazgol Ansarinia’s Connected Pools is a series of sculptures in gradations of blue plaster inspired…

01 Type collection SBW has launched Type, a furniture collection designed and manufactured in Melbourne. Referencing modernist typography, the collection includes stools, dining tables, side tables, plinths and more. Monochromatic colours are used alongside timeless finishes, such as natural stone and marble. sbwaustralia.com.au 02 Visioni B Faded rug Visioni B Faded is a rug designed by Patricia Urquiola for Italian company CC Tapis. Part of the Signature collection, the rug is hand-knotted in Nepal by expert Tibetan artisans. It can be made of Himalayan wool or pure silk, and its size can be customized to suit any room. iwanmaktabi.com 03 Bollo armchair Designed by Andreas Engesvik for Swedish studio Fogia, the Bollo armchair combines deep comfort with clean lines. Generous, soft cushions embrace the slim tubular frames, which are evocative…

Beginning a piece of journalistic writing with a dictionary definition is something of a tired trope, but after meeting architect Andrew Maynard and his client Jane at the Yarra Bend House in Clifton Hill, I was compelled to look up a formal definition of the word “holistic.” The best version I could find defined holistic to mean an entity where the “parts of something are interconnected and can be explained only by reference to the whole.” This is a pretty good starting point, and not only because of the qualities of Yarra Bend House itself. It also draws out consideration of the entire ethic and methodology of Andrew’s practice, Austin Maynard Architects, as a creative business. After all, these elements are also “parts of the whole” when significant architectural works…

It’s hard not to be excited by YSG Studio. The practice’s work is like a great song that makes you want to turn up the volume and listen to it on repeat. Fed up with the bare white walls and grey concrete floors that define so much of Australian residential design, YSG Studio aims to revive our sensorial perception with colours, compositions, textures and stories – and people are hungry for it. YSG Studio was established in 2020 by Yasmine Saleh Ghoniem. Despite a clear passion for performing, having been singing and dancing since the age of four, Yasmine was convinced by her parents to pursue academic study. She first studied visual communications in Dubai and then fine arts and interiors in the USA. Subsequently Yasmine worked in several architectural…