I think for any builder there is two things that most of them don't want to touch,
it's a steep block which is probably 11 meters slope here and 40 meters long and
the second one is a house pre-1945 falling apart, and this site had both of them and I
thought I could do something pretty cool if we get all the design to work accordingly.
My name is Aurelien Berson, I'm the director of
Aurelien Berson construction I'm also the owner of this property,
so Norman Park is from my point of view a bit of an underrated suburb in Brisbane because it's so
convenient and so close to the city, like I always feel I can touch the city from here.
I just wanted to do something that people don't do and the fact that
I have a very sporty family I just created some kids-friendly
and and just fun rooms for everyone pretty much in the house you know.
The brief is not your normal process, the client has a knack of finding these unusual
sites and will then contact me and then we'll come out to the site and have a look at it,
and I'm always confronted with something that's a little bit strange and different.
My name's Craig Webster, I'm the director of Monster Ideas
Architects and the architect of the Berson House.
There's five levels to this house but it's really designed as a as a two-storey house
that steps up the site to make the five levels. Given the restricted access off the laneway,
we put a four car garage and buried it into the hill and gave it a real stone
finish on it so you're walking past this wall through what is really a large glazed door,
which on one side will open into the garage and the other one will open into the entry courtyard.
On the next storey up is really the guest room and
the family room for the kids and we use the roof of the garage for the terrace.
On the next level up, the idea of the the two-storey climbing wall,
the indoor play arena which is like a mini soccer field,
and the wine cellar with the beautiful glass window that looks out into the pool.
From there you go up to the critical storey where really you've got your living, dining, kitchen and
terrace, it's done as a quadrant, every part of this house is about maximising space, we try and
not have any corridors, everything has a use so this is about connecting the view to the South
to the light and the ventilation, the breezes we have from the North as well and so I wanted to
be able to stand in the backyard make the house transparent and see right through to the view so
anything on this level you knew exactly where you stood on the site and appreciated where you were.
We decided to put a 20 meter lap pool in, so we managed to bury it
at one end and let it cantilever two storeys in the air towards the slope and
then integrate with the lower storeys so that gave us the opportunity to punctuate
windows into the pool so that from the girls bedroom or from the wine cellar
and from the street you you can see windows into the pool and they'd light those spaces.
Then the idea was to have an isolated stairwell up to the the house on top,
which was quite suitable because it is an adult retreat, it's not for the public,
it's not for the kids, it's for the parents to use and the whole of the house up there
has been re-engineered really to become more of a modern lifestyle and then we
just sort of celebrated the roof line and the character elements from the silhouette
because they were sitting along the ridgeline of a Norman Park hillside.
Tongue & Groove has contributed to the refined interior scheme because it supported the dark
interior by injecting warmth into the space, it counterbalanced the coldness
of the concrete and the sharpness of the black batten hiding on the walls.
Hi my name is Ashley Madison, I'm the creative
founder of AM Interior Studio and I'm the interior designer of Berson House.
We selected Freado in the natural grade timber, the narrow board was nominated for the external
soffits and the bathroom ceilings, just for their cost-effective and manageable size.
The wider format boards were installed on the floor and the client even incorporated
planks of timber into the custom dining table in the wine and cheese cellar.
We also introduced moss which is a natural preserving lichen,
it's a maintenance-free green wall and it survives from the moisture from the air.
One of the spaces I'm quite proud of is the terrace that comes off the living/dining area,
it has a custom-made concrete seat made here in Brisbane and craned onto site.
I'm probably proud of the whole process of working with someone
like Aurelien who's a builder and the owner, very inspiring, let us do our job, super fun.
When I look at the photo when I put the block of land to where we are now
it's pretty incredible what we have achieved.