Telephone +61 7 3844 1362
studio@shanethompson.com.au
47 Wahcumba St, Dutton Park
PO Box 1170 Fortitude Valley
Queensland 4006 Australia
Toowong, Australia.
The client’s ambitions for this very low budget house centered on the provision of a toxin-free house with a significant “indoor/outdoor” living space, together with two bedrooms, a yoga room, two bathrooms, and a lap pool. As the clients’ only son was on the verge of leaving home, the house was intended principally for the two of them to live, entertain, and, on occasion, work in. There was also a request for a strong spiritual quality to the house.
The 450m² site was ideal in its orientation and fall to the north, and toward the street, yet it was still restricted by the 15 meter frontage and its overall small size. A strategy of planning the house around a central “indoor/outdoor” room with a high roof was adopted – privacy was maximised, and a cross section allowed the building to be built to the minimum side boundary setbacks while still providing high, memorable volume. Full advantage was taken of the orientation and view.
This planning strategy was coupled with a conceptual strategy of orchestrating the sequence of movement through the site and house. Upon entry one ascends onto a deck at the level of the branches of a large and rare brown pine tree and into the outdoor room in which the structure is exposed and a thin metal lined roof sails overhead. Changes in floor height demarcate the transition into the flanking rooms and up to the hermetic space behind. Long views are framed in both directions and increase the perceived scale of the space. The lap pool pushed up against the rear of the house echoes a gorge between the “cave” and garden. This is a house with a tight (maintenance free) skin wrapped around a timber skeletal core.