Leura House

How can this be done with fewer materials? is a question architect James Stockwell often asked himself while designing this home in Leura, a township nestled high in the Blue Mountains. Overlooking a valley and small creek to the Northeast, the lithe structure is perched on a neat bed of local rammed earth. Even the upper floor appears as if it is floating, since it is supported by a grid of slender Australian hardwood columns cantilevering off the central loft slab. The spine walls on the ground floor are of crushed local sandstone in rammed earth forms, which in addition to the highlights of embedded ironstone give the space a warm hue. These layered walls are reminiscent of the quartz sandstone’s original sedimentary form, and of the geology of the Blue Mountains area. The house is, as the architect intended, a unique product of the contemporary Australian view on the environment, and of Australian materials and construction.

That good design owes more to disciplined exclusion than to addition and variety is no secret. Many great designers and philosophers have said as much, or have gone as far as Antoine de Saint- Exupéry in saying that perfection is achieved “not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. The considerable skill and ethic it takes to truly put this to practise is evident in the Leura house: there is in fact nothing left to take away from it. If Stockwell’s work is reminiscent of the Sydney School, or to the work of the Japanese architects he admires, it might be because it borrows from the best of those branches of architecture: the intelligent minimal use of humble materials and vernacular typologies to fulfil the function of a building, and a respect for the unique qualities of humble materials. He also self-professedly adopts the Corbusian conception of a house as a ‘machine for living’. Stockwell describes the Leura house as a “contemporary autonomous house”, which it is, and a thing of authentic beauty too.

In fact the clients who commissioned the Leura House (a retired judge and former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, and a maker of environmental documentaries) were adamant that the house should be as autonomous as possible. It does sport the typical environmental equipment like a bank of solar panels, which feeds its excess power back into the grid, and a large underground water tank, which allows the house to operate independently of town water; but the key to the house’s sustainability is in the architecture itself. In addition to the hydronically heated floors, the home is warmed by the lag effect provided by the thermal mass of the floor and spine walls, which are 300 and 600mm thick forms rammed with crushed sandstone and 10% cement. A simple pulley operated aerofoil panel in the veranda roof admits the 30 degree winter sun, which heats the stone elements during the day. At night the heat dissipates into the interior. The core of the house can be isolated for further warmth.

In Summer, ventilation hatches and the deep overhanging verandas, which employ a triangular plywood diaphragm panel for the narrowest possible profile, keep the interior cool; and when necessary tank water can be brought to the roof edges and sprayed to cool the veranda. The plan of the house is flexible, to allow the house to open up when the clients’ grandchildren and other guests stay as well as to ventilate the interior in Summer. All of the many environmental features in the Leura House are decidedly low tech and for that reason, less demanding of maintenance, and often more sustainable. +

1 The house consists of two distinct pavilions which enclose a games terrace, and serves as a buffer between the very open living spaces and the valley beyond. 2 The environmental functions of the building are once again clearly expressed. Even the way the hardwood columns meet the veranda roof is a celebration of the function of each material. 3 There is a Japanese character to the pavilion-like and linear house, and its slender timber columns. But the Leura house is very much a site-specific response to the environment of the Blue Mountains. 4 The layered character of the rammed sandstone alludes to the original sedimentary form of the rock. 5 Openness and light were paramount in the clients' brief. 6 Small glazing blocks hold the copious glass in this house, which is sheltered by deeply overhanging roofs in summer. Varying edge conditions make this loft space highly flexible. 7 The aerofoil-like diaphragm panel is operated by a simple pulley. It is counter-balanced to prevent the wind from tipping or damaging it.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Patrick Bingham-Hall