When we tried to think of a name for a house the one that sat with most of us in the design
team was Park House.
It's got a view of the park ,it has a setting of trees, has our own trees, our palms and
our conifers there for many decades and you want to be connected to them.
So when you look at the house from the park, from the street you're reading the form of
the first floor is something that respects and floats behind the landscape.
I'm John Rose director TKD Architects, welcome to our house in Double Bay we're in Gadigal
Country of the Eora Nation.
The initial brief was for a family, young family, growing and to create an area on the
ground that made the most of the site itself and to then create the sort of private world
upstairs where someone could relax and to be able to come home and feel that sort of
peace and quiet and calm was also part of the the design, the philosophy.
With this then, we took a thought on the form and hence the use of the curves and I think
the curves in the house, the solidity of the base level, the ground floor and then taking
that up to the actual external expression was important in relaying that sense of calm.
Double Bay is an area of Sydney where houses mix with multi-residential apartments, townhouses,
so it's quite mixed.
This site has a beautiful frontage but it's surrounded by medium density housing so it's
quite impacted by overseeing.
We've designed the house to sit in the southeast corner so that you can partake of a front
yard, you can get all the natural light in that you need, you can do it all in a very
private way.
Parking in this area is very difficult so you do need to make arrival from the vehicle
something that people enjoy.
Its actual program is not excessive, we're able to get a vertical atrium volume which
is there for light, for separation of spaces and also connection spaces.
In terms of design principles the play of natural light, a very important part of anything
we do but in particular for the client.
The previous house on the site was very dark, all of the building form, the cutouts in the
building, the use of skylights, the positioning of glassed elements are all about getting
the right sort of light into the house at the right time.
On the western side there are screens which open and close and the perforations in those
elements, especially to the master ensuite, are graded so that elements that face the
setting western summer sun have the smallest number of holes, whereas elements have faced
the northern northwestern have a larger number of holes.
The dapple light that comes through is something that's really nice.
One of the wonderful things with this project was that we were able to do the architecture
and the interior design all ourselves and you can see that in the design of the kitchen,
the design of the stair, even the loose furniture is all selected and or made from off cuts
of stone etc, so that it relates to that.
The fireplace in this house is very important in its location, it's also very important
in its design, the way that you can see through it allows it to form the division between
spaces but still allow the connectivity from as far back as the kitchen.
One of the reasons we use Stoke and the reason we like using their fireplaces is that they
allow us to connect with their technician so we can understand what we can and can't
achieve.
My name is Jarrod Strauss director of Stoke Fireplace Studio Sydney the brief for this
project was to provide a large gas fireplace which acted as a divider between the living
and lounge room of the home, one of the prime features of this product is the fact that
it is entirely frameless and you have the ability to finish the brass right up to the
glass around the fireplace from the frameless finish of the fireplace, to the large raised
elevated logs which are moulded based on Australian hardwood fill the firebox and give it lot
of body for its flames.
One of the key factors was we didn't actually want to vent the machine through any of the
facades of the building so the actual exhaust system had to terminate vertically all the
way to the ceiling.
To get all of the clean lines that the fireplace allows the design of them is beautiful they
actually heat as well this is about sitting around a fire and enjoying having a real fire.
The arrival to the house is through a garden into a fairly grand front door, once you open
the door you experience the curvature of the house.
Then of course you have the combined kitchen, dining, living space, this is zoned in a fairly
traditional way very important to it was the way that the fireplace actually is an element,
creates the differential between those spaces.
The next zone back has an atrium space that goes up three stories through the house, there's
a verticality to the centre and core of the house which makes one feel you've arrived.
The kitchen of course these days has a wonderful back of house so that it's a fairly simple
kitchen but it's connected to a separate family room and that family room has doors which
slide away into a cavity so in most days you wouldn't know they're there and it all operates
as one large sort of L space, which is all focused out onto the outdoor terrace, the
outdoor pool and the garden.
Going up through the stair at both sides of the gallery there's a private entry to the
kids wing, the parent retreat contains master bedroom, two dressing rooms and an ensuite.
The ensuite itself is on the north side it allows you to feel and be part of while you're
in the bath, the dappled light that comes through the screen.
Master bedroom has a wonderful feel of being able to open up to a balcony which is screened
or unscreened you then circulate up the stair again to what is basically a private retreat,
library.
Which allows you to actually sit and look out over the lower roof towards the harbour.
When you're an architect and when you work with the interior designer and you come up
with a concept to be able to A. convince a client that that concept is what they want
and then to realise all of the mechanisms in the house as well as the building forms
the materiality and to be able to walk in the door at the end and just see that it is
what you imagined at the beginning, that's what I love most about this house.