Project description
The watershed from the hillside at Ormond Terrace runs into Witton Creek and empties into the Brisbane River nearby. The gully site, bought in 1980. was selected for its trees and surrounding bushland. It included a small weatherboard shack built on the cheap in the 1950s. The project was to make a home for ourselves with few funds and semi-skilled labour.
The design strategy was to strip the old house down to its basic core structure by removing the lean-to bathroom on the west and the entry porch on the south. All existing window openings were retained but the sills were dropped to floor level throughout the house. In this state, the house plan consisted of three rooms strung out in a row along the contours of the hillside.
The next part of the strategy was to construct a three-dimensional grid of columns and beams designed to girdle these three rooms and to stretch out into the landscape as an open timber framework. Parts of the framework were then enclosed; for example, on the west to form a sky-lit gallery containing service rooms; in some areas the framework was partly enclosed, such as the south verandah, and in others it has been left open to contain decking or frame a tree.
The three core rooms were relined in plasterboard, and the plasterboard ceiling curved to alter the proportions and to increase the sense of room enclosure. The surfaces in the three core rooms are smooth and white, in contrast to those on the periphery that are textured and in darker colours.
Project intentions
The intention has been to emphasise the enclosure and interiority of the three rooms and underscore the open exteriority of the adjacent areas of the landscape framework. The play of this contrast in spatial terms is experienced in moving between core and periphery, as the three interior rooms are connected only through the sky-lit gallery or the framework of the eastern deck.
Adapting the timber framework in response to the particular places on the site allows engagement with climate and landscape, including changing light qualities, seasonal breezes and special views. Places include a morning deck with filtered light and a summer deck sheltered from the sun and tropical downpours.
The intention of contrasting interior and exterior space involved colour, texture and form as well as designing the physical elements of the peripheral enclosure to be fragile, sheer and ambiguous as to their inside/outside allegiance. The timber frame extends from the core rooms outwards to the landscape, and on the periphery provides support for single sheeting spans for a piece of curved perspex or corrugated iron, or acts simply as the head of the door. Beyond the enclosure, the timber frame is less encumbered in the landscape, where it becomes vine-covered, sky-framing or supports a swing.
The studio addition required the frame to accept a new enclosed space linking the principal floor level of the house to the level of a garden terrace below. The square-plan studio is placed at an angle to the main house to avoid a too severe closure to the southern deck, while promoting new. oblique garden views and retaining existing trees.
The timber frame is extended to the studio built with exposed studs to the outside. It continues the intention of exploring the making of flimsy enclosure, here with a single skin of chamfer boards and recycled louvre glazing as a screen wall.
RUMAH MINIMALIS