When we were designing the house we went and visited one of the clients sheds on the property,
it was lined in recycled floorboards and had exposed timber paneling which created stables,
we felt that this house had to have a similar aesthetic, we felt that it was important for it to
be purely authentically Australian that it should be a reflection of that vernacular. Stonelea is
situated in one of three major valleys that makes up the UNESCO world heritage Blue Mountains.
The client has owned the site since the early 2000s. The existing Stonelea
Cottage was once here, it was actually the original Leura Station Master's Cottage,
a major part of their brief was for the house to be quintessentially Australian.
It had to represent a building that could sit harmonious within the Australian countryside.
We identified the problems with the existing cottage, we wanted to retain elements that were
working, what we did with the new house was we elongated the form, we gave the opportunity for
each space, so from every room you have an ability to be able to connect with the landscape beyond.
Carbon footprint, it's not as though it is one facet, it needs to be considered
across each step of the process and it stems from the very beginning of the design phase,
thinking about how a house sits on the site, how it responds to the climate.
It was important to keep the house scale low, as you open up the front
door then the full volume of the house is revealed. Once inside the kitchen space,
you can look through both ends of the house, through the living space or even
down the gallery there's always sight lines that are connecting you with the outside.
Each corner of the living room retracts and opens up on both sides of the living room
so you get that feeling of the internal space flowing directly to the outside. The fireplace
which the clients actually sourced the stone from the property, they were quite connected to that,
we actually built the new fireplace in the exact same location as the original fireplace.
As you move through the hallway you experience the play of light and shadow as the sun changes
throughout the day, the hallway is intended to be at times a veranda for the bedrooms.
The first room on your left is the kids bunk room which also has its own bathroom and then as you
continue down the hallway the bedrooms are on your left and each bedroom has a framed view to the
south of the mountains beyond. Sun is encouraged to enter the rooms through a tapered skylight that
also provides natural light to the ensuites. Each skylight has a horizon louvre installed on top of
the skylight to control the amount of sun entering the bedrooms. The master bedroom suite sits at the
Western end of the house, the pool is heated by four geo air heat pumps to provide a constant
temperature and the pool includes a retractable pool cover which also assists to maintain a
constant temperature and reduce evaporation. The staircase leads downstairs to a bar, there
is a number of other small rooms, one being a climate controlled cellar for the storage of wine,
there's a laundry and a plant room which houses all of the equipment that powers the house.
We drew a lot of inspiration from the site and the surrounding landscape to form our material palette
for the house. Throughout the home we have used recycled blackbutt hardwood for all of the timber
cladding, internal and external, for the exposed roof structure and also all of the decking.
Where you can assist in reducing the carbon footprint, using materials
that don't require constant upkeep, we've opted in this project to express natural
materials and the attributes of natural materials so they can patina with time,
that becomes the character that creates the architecture, thinking about how a
house sits on the site how it responds to the climate, being able to weigh up decisions based
on embodied energy versus longevity goes a long way to reducing the carbon footprint.
A building is a sum of many parts it's the result of combined efforts for many people
and what I'm most proud of about this project is that every time I return it feels more and
more like a home, it feels more settled into its surrounds and it feels like it belongs.