Hugh Gordon Architect

This house was designed to be a robust family home, through and through. With a flock of three young children, the clients wanted a straightforward, functional, liveable home: warm, and light-filled, with lots of space and plenty of opportunity to enjoy its external surroundings. They wanted no lofty airs and graces: no pretensions of grandeur, nor precious fragility. And yet, as great as ‘durable’ and ‘lowmaintenance’ sound, no family dreams of living in a utilitarian bunker, nor do they want to inhabit an oversized playroom, just to keep the children happy. And so architect Hugh Gordon worked intensively with the couple – one of whom is also the interior designer – to produce a sustainable, versatile home that meets the family’s present and future needs, while also incorporating striking aesthetic details worthy of an award-winning architectural project.

The basic construction principle is a high thermal mass, achieved at a basic level by the burnished concrete slab floor, combined with passive heating and cooling, and high levels of insulation. With a family of five to satisfy, sustainable comfort is the name of the game: northern “Comfort Plus” glazing provides abundant solar access and warmth in winter, supplemented by a hydronic in-slab heating system. In summer the overhanging eaves and cross ventilation come into their own, ensuring an equally effective standard of natural temperature control.

The steep slope of the block became a benefit rather than a hindrance, allowing for two storeys at the front elevation, taking advantage of the best views to the South East. At the rear northern aspect, deck and native garden are almost contiguous, ensuring a strong sense of harmony between indoors and out. The entry level of the home accommodates the garage, studio and water tanks, which is used for the toilet cisterns and laundry, as well as supplying the subsurface greywater irrigation for the native garden. But it is towards the dominant northern elevation that the living and bedroom spaces face, and the rooflines pitch up towards this leading aspect.

The open plan layout – particularly with respect to the study and living room – allows for supervision of the children’s homework and internet usage, yet balance is maintained by the inclusion of playroom that can be acoustically isolated, to contain even the most raucous childhood games and DVD sessions.

Extensive glazing of the open living spaces creates a sense of sitting in the treetops and an enhanced feeling of connection with the outdoors: the garden and the children’s playing areas in the foreground, and the hills and the distant city beyond. The indoorsoutdoors feeling is further accentuated by day beds, clerestory windows and raked ceilings, forming a strong relationship with the treetop views and natural daylighting. These living areas also protect the rear deck from winter’s south westerly winds, and enable the deck to act as a sheltered conduit between the interior and the northfacing garden. The east-facing deck off the dining area also captures the city view and the cooling breezes on a summer’s afternoon.

The building materials also link the home to its context. Dark grey blockwork along the southern boundary visually anchors the lighter construction of the other elevations, and plays on the charcoal and silver-toned Eucalyptus Manifera trees that line the streets of this Canberra ‘bush suburb’. As per the client brief, the exterior materials were chosen to create tonal, textural and thematic interest, with a prevalence of shadow lines and exposed fixings. The external finishes epitomise this perfect balance between low maintenance and intriguing aesthetics: walls of shot-blast concrete blocks, CFC panels with expressed joints, Colorbond customorb sheeting, hoop-pine marine ply and CFC sheeting eaves, and recycled timbers finished in organoil.

The internal finishes are similarly sustainable yet sophisticated, as could be expected when one of the clients is also the interior designer. The predominant feature is glossy timber, and swathes of it. Recycled brushbox timber flooring and hoop pine ply joinery are all finished with a natural “Osmo” hardwax oil, creating a rich and luxurious – yet of course practical and hard-wearing – finish. Together with the use of low emission paints and energy efficient lighting throughout, the result is a warm, inviting, low-energy, lowmaintenance, robust family home.

It’s everything the clients wanted, and more. +

1 Windows are angled to catch natural light, and capitalise on the best semi-rural and city views. 2 Materials for the external facades were designed for low maintenance and maximum aesthetic variety. The concrete blockwork is durable yet modern, and all timber is recycled. 3 Robust doesn't have to mean plain or dull, as proven by the eclectic selection of interior materials. 4 Chosen for durability and economy, natural surfaces such as timber and shot-face concrete clocks add a touch of modern sophistication throughout the home.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Jeremy Rozdez, Blink Photo Design