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This house is situated in Toorak, one of the older suburbs in Melbourne. Larger family homes with
big established gardens. This project was actually introduced to us by the builders Davies Henderson.
It was a great brief to work with, our clients wanted a house that was very open and grand but
also paired back. Always alluding to something that is beyond where you're at at the moment.
Scaling this project is really important. It's a four bedroom house with two lounge rooms and big
double height voids, so it's a large house, but the idea was that from the street,
it didn't give everything away at once.
The curved wall would lead you through and as you came around that corner,
this double height space with the spiral stair was revealed, completely in in-situ concrete.
It's a space for us to stop and transition.
One of the important things is about creating a continuity
and we use material a lot to achieve that. Wherever you stand on this project, you generally
get a sense of most of the materials that we've used; concrete, terrazzo, timber and stone.
That continuity that it creates leads you from one space to another without it feeling like it jars.
The perception of a material as being one thing can actually
give you an opportunity to use it in a different way. With the stair in particular,
the idea was to use a really heavy material like concrete but making it feel like it floats.
As you move through the house, you discovered different elements to it. You felt the grander
spaces, you felt the smallest places. We're always telling a different story.
The use of stone on this project was also highly considered.
We've used two stones; we've used a light stone and we've used a very,
very featured green stone which creates a really nice aspect to the outside.
We work with Nathan Burkett Landscape Design
and it's essentially set up as a series of courtyards that the house wraps itself around.
One of the things that this landscape design has done is it allowed us
to create a sense of connection between the inside and the outside and quite seamlessly. The inside
feels like an extension of the outside and the outside feels like an extension of the inside.
Light in this project is really important. As humans, it nourishes you, it actually can
change the way that you feel about a space, it can change the way you feel in the space.
Allowing light to enter the house at different times of the day in different spaces,
it's a nice way of actually experiencing the day and create another dimension in the house.
One of the things that we like with all our projects is a sense of timelessness,
but timelessness doesn't mean that it stays pristine as the day that it was
first built. The idea is for materials to wear but to wear and age really well.
It gives another dimension, a slight rawness to what is otherwise a really refined space and
the garden's going to grow, it's going to overtake some of the spaces and it's going to really become
another major element in the structure of the home,
but I think for us the proudest moment is always when we have our clients move into the house
and love where they live. We always feel really privileged that we're entrusted to do that.
I like the fact that every part of this house
goes towards making the whole. If there was any part missing it wouldn't be the same house.
When I see everything come together, the way that it was intended and achieve what was intended,
I think that's my favourite bit. There's a pretty cool stair though.
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