Perth-based Graduate Architect, Johannes Lupolo-Chan is the winner of the 2013 Cemintel™ 9 Dots Award for his innovative, yet practical design for urban dwelling, featuring Cemintel Scarborough Weatherboard, BareStone and Texture Coating System. He has won a 17-day architectural trip to the USA as part of the award.
Titled 10 x 10 The Laneway House, the winning design is a proposed typology for new laneway housing in Perth’s inner city suburbs – notorious for having the lowest density per square km in Australia. Finding that a typical block size was 400-500m² and usually 10m wide, the 10 x 10 project was designed to allow easy subdivision of existing land with access to laneways, utilising Cemintel’s Creative range of cladding and ceiling solutions to enable individuals to personalise these 10 x 10 houses.
Johannes’s vision for comfortable and affordable housing in high density established areas won him the award. According to Cemintel™ Senior Product Manager, Ben Thompson, the 10 x 10 concept meets the specific need for urban infill in Australia’s inner-city areas. Designed for the many laneways that weave their way through these established suburbs, the concept offers the comfort of a single dwelling with high lofty ceilings and access to northerly sunlight into the home providing a comfortable and bright feel.
Johannes utilised a combination of Cemintel™ Scarborough Weatherboard, BareStone and Texture Coating System to create an expressive design and inject life into these often-neglected laneways. This combination of Cemintel’s Creative products has been used for external cladding and internal lining, creating seamless integration between indoor and outdoor spaces and maximising the room, comfort and light within the small dwelling.
Entries to the 2013 Cemintel™ 9 Dots Award were evaluated by a judging panel consisting of Malcolm Carver - Scott Carver Architects, Melonie Bayl-Smith - Bijl Architects Sydney, Kim Chadwick - Colourways and David Neustein - Other Architects.
On behalf of the panel, Melonie said that Johannes was unanimously selected as the clear winner of the Professional Category with his 10 x 10 The Laneway House proposal. She explains that the success of the broad-minded urban considerations in the 10 x 10 Laneway House design proposal is founded in its material language and keen sense of scale. As a prototype of sorts, the 10 x 10 Laneway House identifies that the textures, sizes and inherent characteristics of the various Cemintel™ Creative products present interesting opportunities for individualising a standardised design.
Melonie highlighted Mr Lupolo Chan’s selection of Scarborough Weatherboard as the key external cladding element, with the horizontal application de-emphasising the height of the three-storey dwelling unit and providing a reference point to the traditional use of board cladding in Australian residential building.
By virtue of the proposed site size, building footprint and plan layout, the 10 x 10 Laneway House embraces a significant sustainability agenda, with the ‘single material’ philosophy allowing the Cemintel™ Creative range to be deployed as an ‘all-over’ cladding system with inherent material efficiencies in relation to sheet sizes, digital fabrication, waste minimisation, and construction simplicity.
Johannes likes the challenge of small, tight and quirky spaces and believes there are many great examples of ‘smaller living’ from architects in Japan, America and Europe who have redefined the way spaces are used in homes on small blocks.
Highly Commended for the second year and $1,000 went to Andreas Hahn of Melbourne for his entry La Scala featuring Scarborough Weatherboards, RendaLine and Designer Series Slimline Slate.
Winning the new Student Category and accepting $2,000 towards student fees, Karl Martin’s flexible community centre questions and rethinks the use of conventional public buildings. Commended in the student category was awarded to Peter Brown for his design of Peter’s Market House, a proposed community centre for the Eco Sustainable Village featuring BareStone.
Cemintel™ thanked all the judges and participants of the 2013 9 Dots Award.
Cemintel™ Creative solutions are designed to make buildings look great and include Designer Series, a prefinished walling system with a range of unique textures and colours; the modern commercial aesthetic provided by the ExpressWall range, including the prefinished, raw cement aesthetic provided by BareStone; the traditional weatherboard look, provided by Scarborough, Headland and Endeavor; the complementary vertical aesthetic provided by Cemintel’s new edge cladding; and SoffitLine, a flush jointed exterior ceiling product.
