AB house really exemplifies how Office MI-JI designs, because it's looking at
a distinct problem and viewing that in a different way, so the flood overlay,
making the house being elevated up one metre, we looked at that very much from
a structural perspective and that steel perimeter frame which the whole house hangs
off really exemplifies how we look at simple things that can be done in a different way.
I'm Jimmy from Office MI-JI and I'm Millie from Office
MI-JI and we were the Architects for AB House.
The site is located in Barwon Heads on the Bellarine peninsula which is 1.5 hours
Southwest from Melbourne and the site's roughly 500 metres from the Barwon river and 13th Beach.
The brief from the clients was relatively loose, we have a close relationship with
them so there's a strong understanding between ourselves and them and they
basically said that they would like a three-bedroom, three bathroom home,
privacy was important to them as well as including a lot of natural light.
So because this is a holiday house the clients are often here on their own so we've separated the
house into a front section which is almost like a single apartment for the two clients to stay
full-time when they want and then when they need visitors or want to have family over we've allowed
for the back two bedrooms to provide spaces to stay there and that separation really allows
for the clients to use this small section of the house efficiently and then it can really open up.
The budget for this project was incredibly important to the client so one way we dealt with
that was by implementing very cost-effective materials from an exterior point of view,
so the ground level is corrugated fibreglass and the upper level is a corrugated galvanized
steel which is much more sort of industrial materials than are commonly used down in the
coast and this also led us to be able to use a bit more richer, warmer materials internally.
So we looked at using a green to highlight a little bit of this kitchen wall,
all the grating from an exterior perspective is a green grating and
then we've also used green in some of the pirelli rubber floor tiles in the
back bathrooms and the laundry areas and this really kind of creates a base sort of
note to the house which runs all the way through the front area to the back area.
The kitchen island was a unique component of the house where we have implemented hand-buffed
stainless steel as well as hand-buffed aluminium and then the aluminium is
continued through the master ensuite as well as the bathrooms out the back and the powder room.
Skylights have been designed in a way to accommodate the morning and afternoon sun,
the Eastern Skylight is nice and large allowing a lot of the morning light in whereas the Western
Skylight is quite narrow allowing in a bit of light but not much of the heat load.
The major challenges with this project would probably be due to the flooding overlay and
the house having to be elevated off the ground by a metre which led to obvious overlooking issues,
which we had to deal with in the side fences as well as being incredibly
selective with where the windows were located and having screens
on those windows that could operate to allow light in as well as screen off overlooking.
We had a unique kind of experience designing this project where I was in Chicago and Millie was in
London and we were designing this house sort of one traveling to London and the other traveling
to Chicago a few times and was so in that way it was kind of an amazing experience and it actually
bred a lot of trust within ourselves to be able to work together in long distance and then come
home at the time that this started to be built and work on it together from that point onwards.