For me the favourite part of the house is how the light plays.
Being able to be in a place and a space and not actually have any artificial lighting on,
the beauty of that light is really how it transitions from morning through to night,
how it helps to transform the space.
My name is Graham Charbonneau and I'm Director at Studio Gram,
and my name is Olivier and I'm the Project Architect on our Richmond House project.
Richmond is a suburb in the inner west of Adelaide, about three kilometres West of the city.
It is a suburb that dates back to the 1830s.
So the clients came to us with a pretty specific brief on this project,
they'd spent some time as a family traveling around California,
and they'd kinda fallen in love with that kind of desert modernism.
The brief called for a house that could suit a growing family,
as was the kind of access to light. So the clients that are a photographer and a winemaker,
which drove a big part of the brief being that connection to the landscape and the garden beyond.
It's almost desert I think, like the kind of heavy render, like really soft kind of openings.
The original portion of the house was converted to these more private spaces where we've got
three bedrooms, the master ensuite and the main bathroom,
and then you walk through an opening and it kind of reveals itself to the extension,
to a very simple plan, it's a square effectively that's cut into four quadrants.
The dining room, the kitchen, living room and the
Northwestern quadrant which was removed and infilled with a courtyard garden.
So it gave us a lot of access to some beautiful natural light,
a lot of Northern light coming in through the courtyard and then some peaks of sunsets.
The experience was very collaborative, in all our projects we work quite closely with our
client to deliver the home and the project that they want. We also work collaboratively with
a landscape designer by the name of Emma Sadie Thomson. Speaking with Emma through this process,
it helped solidify those key principles we spoke about earlier around that desert modernism.
The themes of mid-century Palm Springs and desert modernism kind of date back to those
early discussions we had with the client around their travels in the United States,
they wanted to create an oasis. I think we achieved this through the use of the materials,
in particular the the render, the crazy paving, travertine these are all kind of
textual qualities that are quite relevant and important. So most of the materials
have been put in place so that they can age over time and grow along with the family.
It's got a nice soft glow through the space even on overcast days,
that helps to illuminate the different rooms even within the bathroom space is
where we've introduced skylights to bring that natural light into those spaces.
One of the unique aspects of this project was the budget and how it aligned to the
project aspirations so we worked very closely with the client, to make sure
that we could still deliver the project that they desired or the budget that they had.
The result is a home that's robust, relaxed and full of character.
I think with this project the thing we're most proud of is the transition from inside to outside.
The overall feeling of this home is one of calmness, it's a an oasis,
it's an escape from the street and really one that allows the family to grow within it.