.jpg');)
SEARCH
OR VIEW ALL PROJECTSOR GO BACK TO SEARCH RESULTSOR VIEW ALLPROJECTS BY ARCHITECT KLOPPER & DAVIS ARCHITECTSRESIDENTIAL PROJECTS2009 PROJECTSPROJECTS IN PERTH |
It's the size of the homes in Peppermint Grove, a stately suburb southwest of Perth, which strikes the visitor first. The blocks are huge, and the houses - a mixture of new and seasoned homes from the turn of the last century - match them in dimension. New or old, each of these houses is set far back from their quiet, tree-lined streets, magnifying the appearence of the edifices even further.
From the road, the ruggedness of an awesome lemon-scented gum counters the slick formality of this house by Klopper and Davis Architects. Sited within a carefully sequenced and restrained garden, flickering interchanges between transparency and reflecction occur on the facade, created by large expanses of glass held within a cluster of larger, white, rectilinear boxes. Shades of timber, off-white and silver appear too, also lifted from the tree, savoured and deployed throughout the house's interior. This was the young firm's first commission, though Matt Davis and Sam Klopper already had considerable individual experience, including years of practice with major Australian architectural firms over the last decade.
Their clients, a couple with three school-age children, asked for a house with the capacity to adapt to the shifting spatial needs they anticipate as the children move toward their teenage years and into young adult life. "We felt that balancing the spatial connection and separation between the parents and the children was critical to the success of the overall house design," Sam says, "Consequently, both generations have their own spaces that connect with each other through vertical and horizontal pathways."
The architects organised the spaces along a central spine that runs through the two-level house and spans its twin pavilions. The spine binds the spaces along its length while also distancing and distinguishing them from one another. It begins in the form of a simple path in the front garden, then escalates slightly on its approach to the front door. Inside, the spine reveals itself three-dimensionally as walls rise around it; the spine navigates straight through the house's interior, first as an entrance, then as a glazed corridor with a first floor catwalk tracing it overhead. Having passed open-air courtyards on either side, the path then moves through the second pavilion, at the core of which is a two-storey fireplace hearth and living room. It continues into an elongated, light-filled gallery space beyond which lies the view of a swimming pool and parallel lines of a grove of young trees to the far edge of the property. The upper level of the house spans the two pavilions and contains private quarters both for parents - in a series of rooms at the north end - and for children, who keep a view to the rear garden.
Extracted from HOUSES Issue 71, words by Lynn Churchill. Courtesy of HOUSE Issue 71.
|
|
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
