When I walk into this space I get a real buzz. It's fun,
it is audacious, it's got attitude and that really does make it feel exciting.
My name is Daniel Stukel Beasley and I'm the architect on the Zig Zag House. So this
house is located in Kensington in Sydney. It's an unlikely area; it's not common to have these large
architectural projects built here. This is a bit of a game changer for the street and for the area.
I'm Andrew Payton from AJP Constructions. I'm the builder for this project.
Stukel Architecture and AJP had worked together on a previous project
and we started talking about this unique design. It was something we hadn't seen before
and there was a lot of complexities involved and Daniel was bouncing ideas off us
on how we could do some of the construction and how some of the construction methods
could be brought to light and then we got engaged early in the project.
The initial brief came from the client and this is a home they've owned for quite a while and
they were looking at returning to their roots and settling down here but in something quite unique
and not your typical residential cottage that you see built up and down these residential streets.
So I was asked to look at removing the back portion of the house, building something
really inspiring and delightful for them to spend their time and also entertain with their friends.
The Zig Zag House has taken its name from the complex ceiling form that we have
here in the building and the complexity at some point was going to have to be communicated to the
construction team. The simplest way I found was just taking a piece of paper like this,
folding it in a concertina way, sort of like becoming a pleated plane. This here is the general
geometry that we have running across the ceiling but it's joining with the existing building behind
us, which has the flat ceiling plane. So if this was stretched flat like this, that's going to
be one end of our ceiling plane and then that out to the west becomes sort of more a pleated plane,
that starts to have some structural capabilities and also allows for additional modulation, to
create some of the rooms and spaces that we have such as the lounge, the dining and the kitchen.
Being involved early in the process enabled us to work collaboratively with the architect
and we really sat down and looked at a lot of the details and what was currently
planned and how we were going to work through some of those obstacles. Namely the curve that we
had to to formulate for the roof. It was a steel structure, so we figured out that we could bring
a curved glulam element in, which actually resulted in a significant cost saving
and able to get the alignment and the intent that the architect was after.
So the stairs were a necessity on this site, which is sloping and we have quite a delightful
experience when you are moving from one of these planes or one of these levels to the other. Now I
try to make this stair as comfortable as possible, in fact it's quite an indulgence because it does
take up a lot of the floor area of the home, which is one of the freedoms we had with this design.
So the featured stairs are an integral part of the building. They really link between the
old and the new structures. It's all a class one, off form finish and to achieve that and
pour that all on site in one single pour was something that took a lot of care and how we
were going to design the form work so we could strip it off and achieve the desired result.
The materials in this home are quite typical and standard. We haven't really introduced
anything that is out of the norm but what we have done is we've treated each material,
both in construction and finish, in I believe
quite a sort of special unique way so it's no longer recognisable or seen in a typical form.
So some good examples might be again, this this blade column here is a venetian plaster
that is a treatment from base to top and it is seamless. We've got this beautiful oregon concrete
wall as well, which is showcasing a different grain of timber. Another one is a zigzag ceiling;
it's your standard plasterboard but because it's all been taped and set, which means it's like a
monolithic continued surface, people are just confused. They think it might be a big
slab of concrete or something else hovering up there above us
but again it's just the treatment of it that then presents it in a new and interesting way.
The concrete finishes in the house are very prominent in front and centre.
There are a lot of different finishes and textures within the concrete itself
that we had to work to and we worked very closely with the client and the architect to achieve
what they're after and we have these large structural columns that support a lot of the
beams that are in the ceiling, there's a CD ply finish which is something that
is a little bit unusual and I don't think it's been done before and I think that's a result that
we're really proud of and we we thought all the groundwork that we put into it really paid off.
And then even just with the window sills, we had the oregon board transition around
the seal with the exact same grain matching around it, so when we poured the concrete,
it actually rose up and imprinted that same grain, returning back into the window. So there's
a lot of tiny small details that a lot of people wouldn't notice but something i'm really proud of.
My favourite part of the house is actually this character here on my left, this blade column. It
was almost a whimsical idea to insert a column in the centre of a staircase and it really is
the character in the room. It's a very paired back space, it's very controlled and I felt
that we needed a voice or something with a bit of attitude. The reason I think it's so successful
is that the exact form that I've originally drawn has been built and again this is only
possible because of the dedication and smart of the builder, where he has developed a technique
in order to pour this which would just not have been achievable in any other way.