Victorian home won the Timber Development Association’s 2005 Australian Timber Design Award for its “sophisticated design” whereby the top, timbered part of the house is showcased off a neutral, unobtrusive base.
Set among heritage cypress pine trees that once acted as a windbreak to the historic house next door, Flinders House replaced a “nondescript brick house”, according to principal, John Wardle of John Wardle Architects, the home’s designers.
“We had to design a house that would reflect a change in our clients’ life as they moved from the city down to a coastal location,” he says, adding that timber was the strongest characteristic of the site. “There are massive gnarled conifers which were a predominant feature, so the (materials used) had to be something that worked within the vocabulary of these trees, which is why we went for softwood cladding with Western Red Cedar, rather than hardwood which we’d normally use. We wanted to make an association with the pine trees.”
Ass the house overlooks the entry to Westernport Bay Wardle wanted to balance concerns for the character of the site - treed by the pines - and a broad, distant panorama of ocean and bay. The east and west façades are the response, with the former facing the ocean and providing a clear view through a range of glass panels, and the latter floating over a carpet of pine needles.
Three generations needed to be accommodated in the design of the home, but the permanent residents were seniors, with adult children and grandchildren visiting from time to time. To this end, the living spaces for guests were situated on the lower level. “For most of the time the house was for two people and we didn’t want them to feel part of a larger space where you’d be walking past empty bedrooms,” Wardle explains. “So we put all the spaces for visitor use on the ground level to create a plinth with which to sit the primary areas of inhabitation on.”
The ground level, which is partly dug into the site, contains a garage, three bedrooms, a bathroom, as well as a laundry and storage areas, which creates the plinth or podium for the primary parts of the house. The area is set out in linear arrangements with very little timber used. “Downstairs is more subterranean and relies more on a garden outlook and less on a panoramic view of the ocean and bay,” Wardle says. “It’s a masonry chamber, very neutral – we wanted downstairs to be neutral to establish the principal part of the house.”
Upstairs, in contrast, is laid out as if it were a large cantilever terrace, with a huge living/dining space, a kitchen, a study area and a bedroom, creating a series of open spaces, as opposed to the walled enclosures of the ground level. In both the living space and bedroom, two joinery feature elements sit as ‘islands’ in each room. Made from Victorian ash, the floating objects contain the residents’ needs.
“The large timber wall that faces the pine trees wraps inwardly to create these two distinct volumes internally – the living volume and the sleeping volume, and each of those creates one object that satisfies all their needs in that space,” Wardle explains. “For example, one central joinery unit in the living area contains the kitchen, bar, phone nook, hi-fi, TV, fireplace, wood stall and a coat cupboard in one floating linear unit that sits centrally in that space – nothing touches the wall.
“In the bedroom there’s just one object that slopes in the middle that provides the bed head for the bedroom, wardrobes, a small fold-out study, bathroom and powder room, so all these objects fit in the one floating unit. We wanted to create these two large sculptural objects with practical functions.”
The internal face of the wrapped wall is Victorian ash with a lime finish, and completing the timber focus is the floor, made from recycled Eucalyptus Obliqua, and the windows which are all Western Red Cedar. “The structure of the house is such that you sit in a series of portals, broken down into different zones. You see parts of the whole from every part of the living and bedroom space,” Wardle says. “In the bedroom there’s a large sliding door which reveals the view to the bedroom itself so it becomes like a large internalised terrace.”
Timber was chosen for this project, both for its ability to link with the external natural environment surrounding the house, and for its sustainability. “We wanted raw, interesting and predominantly native timbers, which were harvested by sustainable means,” Wardle says. The two local hardwoods – recycled eucalyptus oblique and Victorian Ash – are renewable materials that are low in embodied energy.
Although timber is the predominant material used inside the house, it has a series of counterpoints. “There’s a flush white plasterboard ceiling which floats above the character of the raw recycled Eucalypus Obliqua floor, so you have a densely grained timber floor and an absolutely neutral ceiling,” Wardle explains.
The joinery feature in the bedroom is painted in an MDF high gloss which contrasts against the rich, warm, natural aspect of the Victorian Ash floating unit in the living room.