High Tide House | Ware Architects
Cultivating a close relationship between lifestyle aspirations, tidal estuary, and the town of Brunswick Heads, High Tide House resists coastal conventions, presenting a highly crafted alternative home with strong connections to locality.
On a very small flood prone site the design creatively negotiates constraints by utilising a playful treehouse arrangement where spaces are defined by verticality, voids & adjacencies. Basement spaces are flexible and robust, ready for kids charging in off the creek, and capable to withstand potential flooding events, while upper levels find calmness and prospect amongst the canopy. Comprising locally sourced certified hardwood, the low embodied energy building consciously engages with its environment, further nurturing relationship with place.
Combining structural rigour with expressive craftsmanship, High Tide House condenses the needs of a young family into a compact, adventurous home, closely in tune with its environment and the estuary foreshore of Durrumbil/Brunswick River.
The Surry | Candalepas Associates
Fronting a major arterial road in Surry Hills & on the fringe of the city, this medium density development of 24 new apartments makes a strong & considered contribution to the streetscape.
It is appropriate in scale to its surrounding urban context & exhibits a limited palette of materials. These considerations contributed to the rare decision made by authorities to remove the two heritage (contributory) buildings to make way for this exciting project.
Designed in close collaboration with clients Camilla and Oscar Done this thoughtfully detailed and wellplanned project provides consistent & uncompromised amenity throughout. It successfully answers design challenges, whilst prioritising principles of environmentally sustainable building design. Creative solutions have been sought to address noise & sun, shielding and protecting its inhabitants whilst offering light and efficient ventilation.
The glittering tapestry of turquoise & tangerine coloured ceramic tiles animates the distinctive Elizabeth Street façade, refreshing & reenergising a once neglected part of our city.
The Porter House Hotel | Candalepas Associates
Located in the heart of Sydney, the Porter House Hotel is composed of a 10storey podium wrapping around the south & west of heritagelisted Porter House. The hotels reception, guest & patron facilities are located in Porter House while the guest rooms are housed within the podium.
The design is based upon a delicate interplay of heritage and modernity, evoking a sense of elegant sophistication. A distinct appreciation of craftsmanship pervades throughout, stemming from the sites rich and layered history.
The podium is composed of arches & apses, a uniform & simple expression that contributes to a sense of urban activation at street level. It includes an art installation designed in collaboration with artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso.
Public spaces integrate heritage interpretation, enhancing visitor engagement, while private rooms prioritise comfort & connectivity to the exterior architecture. The room planning emphasises privacy and intimacy, resembling apartments more than hotel suites, contributing to the overall architectural composition.
Quarry House | Winwood Mckenzie
Quarry House is a response to sites constraints and historical use as a workers cottage and adjacency to the former Northcote quarry. Key considerations were resource use and how the reintroduction of light, air and vegetation could be achieved on the site. Introducing internal courtyards, where boundaries are defined by brick walls and life is brought back to the land and residence. Designing around the garden space allowed for a design that can expand and contract to adapt to functional requirements and future use. It manifests an atmosphere enriched by connections to landscape and detailed architectural craftmanship.
Powerhouse Castle Hill | lahznimmo architects
In 2018 CreateNSW engaged lahznimmo architects to design a new 9,000 m2 facility for Powerhouse Castle Hill. The facilities in the 130 metre long building serve the needs of a variety of groups including staff, volunteers, education groups, researchers, artists, scientists, industry partners and the general public. In addition to increasing storage space, it expands the site’s ability to hold public exhibitions, providing a much needed museum facility for the people of Sydney’s northwest.
The storage facility must maintain a constant temperature and relative humidity to protect the collection and is essentially designed like a large esky.
The material palette throughout is minimal and elemental, with the raw expression of materials on display to showcase their natural properties including mill finish aluminium, off-form concrete walls and polished concrete floors. The colour palette continues the cool tonal range from white, through greys to black.
Mansard House | Studio Bright
Not much suburban housing from Melbournes 70s has achieved streetscape heritage status as yet. Typically, houses such as these are demolished for the next big thing. While the original house is not a recognised piece of architecture, Mansard House is readily identifiable as a quintessential example from its time and deserving of retention for its timemarking contribution to a richly textured city that values its past.
Our clients intend aging at home and wish for the house to throw its arms out to extended family. Untangling the order of rooms and access to promote this desire required extensive internal remodelling.
Externally, wall alignments and their relationship to the mansard line are not changed. However, a new longer and finer horizontality transforms the proportioning system of the facade. The once heavy hat of the mansard gains elegance and a floating quality that redefines the way the mass sits in the landscape.
Maitland Bay House | Studio Bright
Located on the central coast of NSW, next to the Boudii National Park, with views down to Maitland Bay across the surrounding native bushland, this new house resolves the difficulties of a sloping site, bushfire regulations and a site compressed between neighbouring properties.
The plan is a careful negotiation between these constraints while providing for living spaces that capture northern light and the views, as well sensitively responding to the ecology of site and the adjacent properties.
Constructed from brick, the building form is defined by two wings that frame the entry sequence, some mature Angophora trees and a protected flat outdoor area for the children to play. Between the two, a linking breezeway is totally operable. The upper level with its form slightly offset from that below, holds bedrooms and study. The overall form is robust and protecting but also porous and able to be opened up as required.
LESS | Pezo Von Ellrichshausen, Oculus, and Molonglo
LESS is a recently completed and evolving work at Dairy Road in Canberra.
LESS is an intentionally ambiguous structure that contributes to the evolving social landscape at Dairy Road an emerging neighbourhood wedged between the Jerrabomberra Wetlands and the industrial suburb of Fyshwick.
LESS is a nondeterministic landmark and nontransactional gathering place. It invites the community to interact with and occupy its spaces as they see fit.
Part public art work, part public space, LESS consists of 36 concrete columns, a circular ramp that leads to a viewing platform and a native garden. A continuous and shallow stream runs through and down the structures columns, pooling, running and returning.
The garden features 8,500 individual plants, made up of 50 species local to the Canberra region. It is a dry bush landscape that subtly changes with the Ngunnawal seasons. Slowly the garden is becoming more immersive and equal to the structure.
Clifton House | Anthony Gill Architects
Replacing an existing bungalow on a suburban block in North Bondi, this new family house is located on the sandy flat that runs from the beach through to Sydney Harbour at Rose Bay.
The surroundings are relatively dense for suburban Sydney with the site sharing boundaries with a mix of housing types, posing a significant challenge in terms of privacy.
The house is carefully planned around a series of courtyards with dense planting to help filter these neighbouring conditions.
The ground floor living rooms open up onto several distinct garden spaces that bring light and ventilation deep into the plan while the upper level relies on the use of fiberglass screens to ensure privacy to the bedrooms. Behind these screens, gardens provide a softness to this strategy and the overall materiality of the house that references the red brick houses and apartment buildings common to the suburb.
Botany Road | Candalepas Associates
Botany Road is composed of two multi residential projects offering generous interiors that utilise space and maximise on natural light. Running parallel to one another, they vary in scale, material, composition, orientation and density.
The façade design is influenced by the client’s Cretan heritage, incorporating the geometry of Cretan antiquity and craft. Geometrical themes symbolically unite both sides of the street, adding an element of change and interest. Drawing from row housing traditions, the intentional repetition aims for a non oppressive, variegated façade on both sides.
The subtle variation in colour of the cream face brickwork enhances the tonal play of light and shadow being created across the façade. The angled bay windows of solid brickwork at the upper levels contrast against the hit and miss brickwork of the lower levels which in turn create shading screens for the privacy and enjoyment of the residents looking onto the street.
