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Architects: panovscott
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Hamish McIntosh
Text description provided by the architects. The room feels slightly too small - not uncomfortably so - but still there is something about the space. The combination of the threshold head height, the steps down from the hall and the slope of the ceiling give a vague feeling of pitching forward, an insinuated disquiet. The internal finishes are neutral, timber below white painted plaster. Curiosity is focused, everything leads to the window that pushes further forward into space above the garden.
Within the bay window, right at the edge, there is a place to stop - at the scale of a person, or to share intimately with another. It is a place to notice life in the canopy, the scallop pattern of the crashing waves in the bay, movement on the ridge, or the whoop of approaching guests. In working deliberately with proportional juxtapositions and heightened bodily experience, we had in mind the architectural technique employed at the Laurentian Library.
There, before a grand stair within a foyer somehow too small, a slight discomfort is evident. Once ascended though, this feeling sweetly dissipates before the serene beauty of the long reading room, made more impactful by what went before. This project called for three additional rooms and a new entrance stair to an existing house by the beach for extended family and guests. The existing two bedroom house had evolved over the years to establish generous internal and external living spaces; the great Australian deck within the trees.
The site slopes steeply with an aspect to the northeast, access is from the street below with outlook afforded through the established front garden and over the bay. To the south is national park with the house located below the narrow ridge of Green Point; this ridge protects from southerlies and limits the potential for severe bushfire.
The works are largely under the footprint of the existing house, so as to minimally impact the surrounding landscape. Design work encompassed carefully considered structural and construction techniques to support the house during construction. The existing deck overhang shades the new north windows in summer and allows a place to sit in the direct sunlight in winter. There is no air conditioning, instead tree canopy overhead and the north-east breezes relieve in summer. The thin floorplate with north and south ventilation hatches provides cross ventilation of all spaces, which perform well environmentally.
Over the years these three small rooms in addition to an existing house by Broken Bay have become emblematic for us of the act of doing very little. A low-resolution architecture that eschews virtuosic technical making but nonetheless enables heightened experience and facilitates an enduring connection with country.
