The most important element was of course the landscape
and starting to design here was of course a reaction to this extremely
strong and unique landscape but also the steep slope going down to the water.
My name is Leopold Banchini and I'm the architect and homeowner of Marra Marra Shack.
The Shack is located on Marramarra Creek we chose this site because it was extremely wild
but the fact that you can only reach by boat makes it even more remote the first time I came
here the beauty of the landscape and somehow the wilderness of it was extremely inspiring.
The brief for the project was very simple it was just a little holiday shack on the river,
it had to have a couple rooms and that's about it so it was a very simple project with a very
simple program and it was my first project in Australia so it was also an occasion for
me to discover the Australian landscape and the amazing crafts that you can find in this country.
Managing a construction site remotely is always a big challenge I believe in this case because of
the crafts and the trades that are so good in Australia and the trust that I had with
the builder it was actually feasible but to make that possible we made a big 1:10 model
in my studio in Switzerland that we shipped here
and that became the main discussion for the construction with builders.
So I think it's really really special site here up the river but it's completely off-grid and
only accessible by boat that means everything had to be built by hand with no heavy machinery so of
course the entire design had to take into account it's it was a house that was going to be built
by two carpenters and to deal with of course the complexity of the weather, the tides, the floods.
So when you arrive at the site by the jetty and you walk upstairs and then they lead to
a single door that opens to this big space the space we're in right now.
And this is somehow the main space of the house it's both living room, kitchen,
dining space and it has this big window that opens to the view into the water.
And in the back you just have two small rooms with bathrooms.
The big south facing window is looking only towards the water
and it gives you really the impression I guess to be on water.
So the window can also be open it's a very large windows, six meter large window,
that opens with counterweights so that the space in the living room almost feels like a terrace.
The window had to be fully welded on site and it's one of these elements
that couldn't be transported so it had to be divided in very small pieces of glass
but this also gives more presence to the window and somehow frame
the landscape into smaller parts and actually really enjoy this feeling.
So the house and the structure of the house is entirely made with
timber, an amazing wood that I had never worked with before the big pillars that
you see in the household the main structure is iron bark.
These elements in wood here are all made with the old jetties or pieces of the jetty that we
found on site I believe that's turpentine and the top of the structure in the beam are spotted gum.
With an unusual house often I think you have to also design that furniture specifically for
it so in this case all of the timber furniture was made with the leftover of the construction
and the fireplace the sink and all the steel elements were also custom made and they were made
to resolve the fuel needs for the house and to be very specific for what was needed in this house.
Being in the middle of the of the national park this area has the highest fire rating possible
so we have to entirely clad it with fibre cements and plasterboard and none of the exterior elements
of the house is visually timber today which is a bit strange but in the end I quite like it,
it creates a quite a strong surprise when you enter the house and discover that
it was actually entire built with timber which is not so obvious from the outside.
But I think for a building like this the most important is that it doesn't transform too much
the landscape and I'm quite happy that when you walk around the house you don't notice it too much
surprisingly it blends into the landscape and I think that's the
most important for a site like this one.