Derek Swalwell Archives - Australian Institute of Architects

Villa Rotunda | WOWOWA Architecture

Sited within Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, Villa Rotunda takes its Italian namesake from Villa La Rotonda a romantic architectural icon enmeshed with an Australianness thats both bastardised and humble the WOWOWA way.
So, when the practice was asked to renovate a latticed Victorian era county cottage and former Romsey Schoolhouse, it seemed only fitting to lionise the treasured rotunda folly in Edinburgh Gardens of the same colonial lineage. This typology mash up invites and distorts the visual language of both rendering them decidedly Australian and not European. Our rotunda walls wouldn’t be painted stucco but rammed earth with ingredients from the local quarry and locally sourced internal timbers and materials. The creamy clay matches the original yellowy weatherboards with the trimmings of each structure establishing the internal colour pallet, that would embellish this tree change residence beautiful mints, greens &amp, rusts.

The Round | BKK Architects + Kerstin Thompson Architects

Wangaratta District Specialist School | Sibling Architecture

Wangaratta District Specialist School caters to students who have clinically diagnosed physical and intellectual disabilities. The new building provides spaces for students to develop skills that encourage independent living. Sensory design devices are employed including colour, tactility, and atmosphere. Such devices are an integral part of the pedagogical experience. These are manifested in several sensory considered spaces, spaces for quiet, spaces for wonder and spaces for respite. Classrooms are designed with intimate learning in mind, with each classroom having its own breakout space and outdoor zone. Colour is used throughout the design to create identity and familiarity for students. With each function of the school assigned a unique identity. The school provides students with space to build skills that encourage independent living, beyond the school years.

Six Ways House | Kennedy Nolan

North Fitzroy is a nineteenth century neighbourhood highly valued for its heritage fabric, making for an interesting and challenging context for a new house. This site has some idiosyncrasies opposite the muchloved Tramways hotel, on a fiveways roundabout and oriented eastwest, its principal aspect facing south. This house replaces a 1980s dwelling which had some nostalgic appeal but was poorly constructed, dark, inflexible and lacking connection to garden. The limitations of the old house largely defined a brief for its replacement a thermally efficient, light filled dwelling with an emphasis on connection to landscape.

Mount Alexander College (MAC) | Kosloff Architecture

MAC is a new public vertical school located in the suburb of Flemington.

The school provides a highly student led curriculum focus, where each years subject offering, and class structure are codesigned with incoming cohorts. In response to this, the building employs adaptable floor plates free from load bearing walls, that enable the program within to continually evolve.

A predominantly red brick suburban context, including a number of significant late 19thcentury civic buildings has played a significant part in the materiality selection for the project. MAC embraces a masonry approach, one of permanency and low maintenance that is referential of 20th century predominantly red brick Public Works school buildings throughout Victoria.

The project aspires to emulate both the sophistication of tertiary institutions and the generosity of successful public buildings, and in doing so reflect the high ambitions of its teaching staff, students, and surrounding community.

Garden House | Zen Architects

The owners of Garden House in Mount Eagle Estate loved their property and garden, but the house lacked light and outdoor connections, and the centre was dark, wasted space. Having lived in the home for more than 20 years, they came to Zen Architects wanting a design that brought them closer to their garden.
While the 1930s heritage façade gives no hint to what lies behind, all is immediately revealed upon opening the front door. Taking inspiration from the curvilinear roads and teardropshaped reserves of the subdivision, we sculpted a curved glass facade into the living area. Drawing light and nature deep into the floor plan, the glass void brings the clients close to their garden from all living spaces, as the interior expands around it.

Fairlie Apartment | Kennedy Nolan

This apartment interior can be found in one of the most celebrated apartment buildings in Melbourne, Fairlie, by the venerable modernists Yuncken Freeman Bothers, Griffiths and Simpson. The brief was for a downsize apartment for a client transitioning from a large house and garden which came with a lifetime of carefully and intelligently collected art and furniture. Our first move was spatial, a desire to break down the cellular plan and introduce enfilades which would reveal the triple aspect of the floorplate but also acknowledge the way an apartment can be inhabited as a variegated progression through a continuous space.

Connected House | Architects EAT

Few projects allow as much experimentation as an architects own home, Connected House is no exception. Fifteen years ago architect/client, Albert Mo and his family moved into a 1950s midcentury home designed by Peter McIntyre. For more than a decade they ruminated on design philosophes that would become the driving force behind the extension. The conceptual framework for the project balanced the restoration of architectural heritage with a new approach to outdoor connections and a growing floor plan to accommodate teenage children. The resulting home is as much about garden as it is about building, the daily ritual of living interacts with nature at all levels from the cantilevered lounge room in the canopy of a mature elm, to the dining tables microcosm courtyard garden.