Selected Project

Higgins Holiday House

The conception of this building is a response to the width of the site, solar orientation and homage to the traditional bach. The building is arranged as five connected spaces, single room in width. The decision to create a single width building is to do with how positively responsive this building type is to the sun path. The elongation of the building and placement of windows & doors to the North & West, opens the spaces up toward the predominant view and exposes the insulated concrete slab to the suns low ebb, providing solar gain in winter. Large bifold doors and insect screen covered shugg windows will ventilate the building in summer. Most widows are placed to either capture the sun or view with minimal slot-like windows placed on the South side of the building primarily for ventilation and visual connection to the bay & bush setting. The most dramatic area of the bach is the cooking/eating area, with its 4.2 m high sarked ceiling and centrally located wood burner. The kitchen is located in the centre of the building with a simple 3.6 meter slab bench and overhead shelf unit. All appliances are immediately on hand. The Dining table is placed parallel to this bench as a supplementary work space, however the kitchen will more than likely only service 2-4 people at a time, so the size of the kitchen reflects this assumption. There was a deliberate client directive to keep the kitchen storage provisions to a minimum. This is due to the different number of family groups that frequent this retreat, so an under bench fridge and pantry drawers, is all that is provided. This keeps the kitchen simple and unclutted in appearance with the bench remaining the dominant element and within the proportion of the surrounding spaces. The service area has a pragmatic 2.5 m-stud height. This is intended to provide extra acoustic and heating insulation in the ceiling and secondly, maintain a proportion that reflects the room size. This room has been colour coded to accentuate its “capsule- like” nature within the main building form. This also allows a visual connection over the ceiling to the foreshore from the sleeping loft as shown on the section. The 5th space, being the sleeping loft, is located over the lounging area. A mono-pitched, sarked roof is draped over this collection of spaces, not only to provide a simple bach-like structure but also to mimic the landform. This roof form also helps to create a hierarchy of spaces. The more intimate, static space being the lounge and sleeping rooms, the most dramatic being the cooking eating area, where the central location of the wood burner will help circulate the heat. The retreat is clad in low maintenance, horizontal cedar bevel-back weatherboards and painted harditex with expressed vertical joins. The choice of two materials is predominantly to exaggerate the change in plane on the North face, as the building diminishes in width. It also has the effect of reducing the scale of the structure.

Category

Residential

Location