An elevated house, perched on a river flood plain, appears to float gently among the surrounding trees in its lush garden settings.
The home’s architects, Edition Office, were inspired by Australian artist Grant Nimmo as they crafted the black-stained Baltic ceilings and dark burnished concrete floors on a big block in Kew, next to Melbourne’s Yarra, or Birrarung, river.
The award-winning practice draws on Nimmo for many of its projects, particularly those with a garden setting.
“It’s the sensory feelings that you get from looking at Grant’s paintings, whether it’s of the space or the atmosphere of walking through mossy undergrowth, the certain temperature that enclave generates,” says architect Aaron Roberts, director of Edition Office, who worked closely with project architect, Jonathan Brener.
The site sits within a flood zone. “We had to remain within the original footprint of the former home, built in the late 1980s,” says Brener.
Fully clad in black-stained timber, the two-level house, with its dramatic undercroft and lush garden, appears recessive in a landscaped garden that’s been designed by Eckersley Garden Architecture.
Although the ground plane can’t include any habitable rooms, due to floodplain restrictions (with a probability of a one-in-100-year occurrence), it is actively used by the family and friends as protected outdoor areas to sit in, along with bathroom facilities and storage pods that service the swimming pool.
“Obviously, connecting to the garden was important but going beyond just providing large panes of glass,” says Roberts, pointing out both the fixed timber-battened screens on the first level, along with the series of voids that “pierce” the home’s floorplan.
The house was also about providing spaces that allowed the family to come together as much as creating nooks that “peel away” from the more open-plan areas.
As with a number of Edition Office’s designs, rather than segment spaces with traditional walls, here they are seen as more akin to objects in a space, structures to walk around that create different perspectives depending on where one is in the home.
The kitchen, for example, beautifully crafted within one of the curvaceous nooks, is like an object, thoughtfully “chiselled” like many of the interior walls in a rich Tasmanian blackwood.
“It’s about contrasts as much as offering different experiences in the space,” says Roberts, who was keen to accentuate the lush garden against the home’s interior.
“Architecture isn’t just about materials. It’s understanding how your clients live and use the spaces, both indoors and out,” says Roberts, who, as with the artist, Grant Nimmo, enjoys seeing how the spaces react in different seasons. The many deciduous trees, including the golden robinia, shed a magical hue across the ceilings in autumn.
Designed as a family home, with three bedrooms including a guest bedroom and a generous main bedroom suite, each room benefits from its own void, framed in curved glass.
Likewise, the shower for the main ensuite, curved and made from a solid piece of stainless steel, is referred to as a “shell” – with a curved skylight above reflecting the sky.
“We’ve always been interested in how architecture affects you psychologically, a bodily experience as much as creating functional spaces that work,” says Roberts.
To allow the family to have their own spaces, as well as those such as the communal areas, the design also features a separate library and a home office.
However, rather than feeling isolated or enclosed, the curved timber walls create the opportunity to peer beyond, not dissimilar to walking through one of Nimmo’s paintings, with the sensation and pleasure of walking through a forest replaced with walking through this remarkable new home – creating memorable experiences that continue to linger.
Even on the terrace, with its black steel ceiling reflecting the tree canopy, there’s a continual dialogue between the built and natural forms.
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Stephen Crafti is a specialist in contemporary design, including architecture, furniture, fashion and decorative arts.