Innehållsförteckning för Issue 147 August 2022 från Houses

Welcome to this special issue of Houses, which celebrates the winners of the 2022 Houses Awards and honours excellence and ingenuity in Australia’s residential architecture and design. The highest accolade, Australian House of the Year, is awarded to Autumn House by Studio Bright. This remarkable design responds to the familiar constraints of a terraced house with imagination and skill. Carefully crafted new layers hinge around enriching connections to gardens that benefit the home’s occupants as well as the wider neighbourhood. The successful integration of home and landscape was a recurrent theme among this year’s winning homes, which also include Corner House by Archier (cover), winner of the award for New House under 200 square metres. This elegant adaptation of the courtyard plan offers its homeowners generous opportunities for both solitude…

When I arrive to tour this house in the northern Melbourne suburb of Preston, the architects, the client and I stand in the front garden to talk about the original interwar home. While Emlyn Olaver and Lucia Amies of Olaver Architecture and client Lauren tell me about the front facade – the beautiful details, the steel-framed corner windows – my gaze trails off to the chalk drawings of whales and fish and waves along the brick exterior. “The kids did that for you guys,” says Lauren. It’s immediately clear this is a family home, and one where play and kidfoolery is ever-present and ever-accommodated. The two young kids were the impetus for the new work at Preston House II. Clients Ollee and Lauren briefed Olaver Architecture to restore and extend…

Award for New House over 200 square metres is supported by Spurning the idea that a coastal home should frame a single view, this house celebrates its dramatic coastal setting while also offering a beautifully warm and calming refuge. Recessive in the landscape, it “remembers” the form of the old house that once occupied the site while equipping it for long-term inhabitation and enjoyment. Integration with landscape is not only considered, but a key driver for the design. The building will disappear over time, at ease in its coastal setting, engulfed by a garden that will spill over and thread around its roof and courtyards. This home invites appreciation of both the surrounding environment and seasonal change. Materials and detailing dematerialize the form. Weathering timber, Coldstream stone walls and recessed…

Cameron Bruhn Writer Professor Cameron Bruhn is the dean and head of school at the University of Queensland’s School of Architecture. Prior to this appointment, he was the editorial director of Architecture Media. Cameron is also co-editor of The Forever House, The Terrace House and The Apartment House, published by Thames and Hudson. Rachel Hurst Writer Rachel Hurst is an adjunct senior research fellow in architecture at the University of South Australia, a freelance writer and a maker. Now based in Melbourne, she describes her practice-based research as an everyday baroque practice in architecture, focused on analogue craft and curatorial agency. Martina Gemmola Photographer Martina is an interior, architecture and lifestyle photographer based in Melbourne. She has travelled and worked throughout Australia, Europe and the US, growing her craft and…

HOUSES AWARDS 2022 JURY…

Award for New House under 200 square metres is supported by Corner House is an elegant solution to a clear and compelling client brief. The house is driven in plan and section by the constraints of the site and the brief to allow for both independence and connection for two design professionals. Deceptively simple in overall form, the courtyard as a figuring device was used less to carve space, and more to pare light. Extensive glazing coupled with compressed circulation spaces and carefully edited walls create a beautifully orchestrated sequence throughout the day and night as one moves through the house. Planning is tight and controlled, with delightful moments in section as the house responds to the changing levels of the site. Despite the compactness of the plan, Corner House’s…

Award for Apartment or Unit is supported by Le Corbusier said: “A house is a machine for living in. Baths, sun, hot-water, cold-water … hygiene, beauty in the sense of good proportion.” The 1960s red-brick apartment block that is home to Inala Apartment may well have been driven by these ideals. But how we live now – and the ways we want our homes to function – has changed. Today, the challenges of reworking older housing stock lie in fixing cramped kitchens, improving awkward circulation and connecting social spaces to the world outside. Inala Apartment responds deftly and decisively to its modern occupants’ aspirations for flexibility and dynamic social interaction. Despite its modest footprint, it exemplifies the transformative power of design and the capacity to reimagine space as a backdrop…

Award for House in a Heritage Context is supported by Autumn House is a wonderfully cohesive family home orchestrated from disparate parts. In a Victorian streetscape of attached terraces, the home occupies a double block. Studio Bright’s design retains only the most valued components. The street entry to the Victorian terrace is restored, and the 1980s addition by Mick Jorgensen serves as design inspiration for further development of the site. New walls envelop the balance of the property, creating courtyard gardens to capture northern sun and embrace an elm tree. The result is a dynamic street relationship that both comfortably sits in its context and hints at the extraordinary design within. From the street, the proportion and setback of the walled addition is broken by the playfulness of an elongated…

Google “Matt Elkan Architect” and you’ll uncover a treasure trove of inspiring work. In the main, that work is beautiful residential projects, which respond to Australia’s unique climate and tropical conditions, and which speak both of minimal beachside living and Japanese aesthetics. These houses radiate tranquillity and calmness, and are quietly peppered across Sydney’s Northern Beaches and, increasingly, further afield – through regional New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Japan. Matt Elkan started sole practice in Sydney’s Northern Beaches in 2006. As the work grew, so did his practice, and the team has since produced a suite of residential works, each one responding thoughtfully to their site and demonstrating exquisite detailing. The houses feature natural palettes of raw and robust materials, bespoke joinery, efficient layouts, and optimum environmental performance.…

Australia is the land of good sheds, from rudimentary rural things to finely detailed houses. Many of our best architects have built lauded careers by designing beautiful versions of the shed. But more recently, the back shed typology in suburban gardens has become a necessary preoccupation. Growing urban populations combined with skyrocketing real estate and construction prices mean that the traditional Australian quarter-acre-block model is no longer appropriate. Instead, we must find ways for multiple families to share existing residential blocks in our sprawling cities. Anna Ciliberto’s work is always careful and thoughtful. So her version of “the shed at the bottom of the garden” is astutely elegant, as well as an extremely nourishing solution to the brief she received. The client, artist Anna-Wili Highfield, aimed to build a small…

Award for Australian House of the Year is supported by Autumn House is a superbly executed update to a Victorian terraced house in Melbourne’s north. The design grapples with many of the problems that constrain alterations and additions to terraced houses and succeeds in establishing outlook, private outdoor space and a generosity to the public realm in a densely populated inner-suburban setting. The project responds to a common brief with uncommon skill, finding cohesion across a multifaceted design response. Every space has been resolved with care and precision, and the design unites three distinct eras: the formal order of the Victorian home, the warmth and intimacy of the 1980s extension by architect Mick Jorgensen, and the contemporary additions that hinge around their garden connections. The planning of the new layers…

Award for House Alteration and Addition over 200 square metres is supported by In recent times, we have demanded more of our homes than ever before: post-pandemic, they have become places for care, learning, work, play, interaction and retreat. Autumn House meets all of these needs, and more. Familiar yet undeniably of its time, the new addition presents as a remarkable landscape to the street edge while also establishing a tougher urban edge to the rear and side lane. Two existing dwellings are carefully navigated – a heritage Victorian terrace and a delightful 1980s extension, designed by Mick Jorgensen. The front corner is generously gifted as garden and the new addition is low set, preserving the scale of the existing terrace while revealing views to the existing elm tree. The…

Award for Sustainability is supported by This house sets a new standard for practical and measurable sustainability, delivering an oasis-like family home on a challenging site that aspires to both net-zero energy and carbon neutrality. With a rail corridor immediately adjacent to the site and a noisy road nearby, the building strategy was to counter the busy locale with high-performance fabric and systems. The finished project represents the opportunities of sustainable development over the sacrificial mindset that often ensues. The home delivers an aspirational objective of ultra-low environmental impact, including consideration of its inhabitants’ comfort and wellbeing, and offers a resilient environment ready for the trials of a harsh and changing climate. The CLT fabric and extensive natural finishes both reduce embodied energy and enhance biophilic outcomes, and the obvious…

NEW HOUSE OVER 200 M² NEW HOUSE UNDER 200 M² HOUSE ALTERATION AND ADDITION OVER 200 M² HOUSE ALTERATION AND ADDITION UNDER 200 M² APARTMENT OR UNIT GARDEN OR LANDSCAPE HOUSE IN A HERITAGE CONTEXT SUSTAINABILITY EMERGING ARCHITECTURE PRACTICE REGISTRATIONS FOR THE 2023 HOUSES AWARDS WILL OPEN IN JANUARY 2023. HOUSESAWARDS.COM.AU…