WURUNDJERI WOI-WURRUNG
Victoria
Conceived as a dwelling embedded within foliage above the Birrarung floodplain, Garden Terrace engages with the quietly powerful experience of being held within a dense landscape. Time, temperature, sound, and colour combine to sustain a lasting sense of wellbeing and a connection to the natural world.
The house accommodates a single family, designed to support visitors. Interior spaces expand, contract and bend around tree canopies and the smoothly cornered timber walls, producing a series of interconnected living areas alongside more intimate zones for retreat.
Garden Terrace negotiates a balance between intimacy and expansiveness, privacy and connection. While outward views are maintained, they are secondary to the inward, bodily experience of inhabiting the canopy and surrounding landscape. The project foregrounds the phenomenological qualities of space, supporting family life as a condition of shared presence within a living environment that is protective, calm, and connected to its natural context.
The Harold Desbroweannear Award For Residential Architecture – Houses (new)
Set back from the edge of the Birrarung, this house is interwoven with landscape in an unusual and striking way.
Almost entirely elevated above ground to avoid the river’s flood plain, it places its occupants, a family with young children, amongst leafy tree canopies, their branches and intensely coloured foliage always in view.
Everything is organised within a strict rectangular footprint. Outer edges of blackened timber walls and screens clearly define the house within its garden as a highly abstract form, almost as a backdrop.
Arrival is through a quiet courtyard garden at the heart of the house. A dark underbelly and various supporting volumes frame glimpses of the verdant garden within and beyond. This is where the concerns of the day are left behind before reaching the entry door.
There is a surprising intimacy of scale to the internal spaces once inside. Simple zoning of living and sleeping quarters belies a sophisticated arrangement of rooms. They are interspersed with screened external chambers containing deciduous Robinia trees, creating a vivid and consistent presence.
It makes for a cinematic sense of immersion within a highly choreographed landscape.
The Harold Desbroweannear Award For Residential Architecture – Houses (new)
Set back from the edge of the Birrarung, this house is interwoven with landscape in an unusual and striking way.
Almost entirely elevated above ground to avoid the river’s flood plain, it places its occupants, a family with young children, amongst leafy tree canopies, their branches and intensely coloured foliage always in view.
Everything is organised within a strict rectangular footprint. Outer edges of blackened timber walls and screens clearly define the house within its garden as a highly abstract form, almost as a backdrop.
Arrival is through a quiet courtyard garden at the heart of the house. A dark underbelly and various supporting volumes frame glimpses of the verdant garden within and beyond. This is where the concerns of the day are left behind before reaching the entry door.
There is a surprising intimacy of scale to the internal spaces once inside. Simple zoning of living and sleeping quarters belies a sophisticated arrangement of rooms. They are interspersed with screened external chambers containing deciduous Robinia trees, creating a vivid and consistent presence.
It makes for a cinematic sense of immersion within a highly choreographed landscape.
Aaron Roberts, Design Architect
Jonathan Brener, Project Architect
Floreancig Smith, Building Surveyor
BREC, Electrical Consultant
Hive Engineering, Electrical Consultant
Eckersley Garden Architecture, Landscape Consultant