Brisbane practice Arkhefield has grown rapidly in the ongoing into a confident, mid-sized firm of 40. Founded on a genuinely process-based, discursive form of architecture that actively works with the client, Arkhefield don’t come armed with a strong house style to impose on projects. What they do bring is general principles – on engagement with the environment and with the region.

It was a particular pleasure for the firm to encounter the client of the Balaam Residence, who was prepared to discuss architecture, interior design, décor, landscape and art as a totality. The total coordination of the construction, and a productive relationship between architect and client allowed the design to overcome idiosyncratic problems with the site. The riverside plot in northeast Brisbane was surrounded by five hundred apartments in tall blocks: a very public realm to build a private house. Orientation and view corridors to the river and to the city clearly had to be carefully finessed, and privacy bolstered.

Arkhefield’s solution was to build upward, and in layers. Due to the nature of the area, town planning regulations allowed a great deal of freedom to pursue height, to stack spaces against the neighbour-overlooked east side while creating a 500 square metre pocket of garden on the west. This is a crucial play space for children and an escape from the heat-sink effects of the built-up urban environment. The internal configuration of stacked children’s rooms to the north and parents’, guests’ and entertaining spaces to the southern riverfront is rationally arranged, but the flow, shaping and interlocking of these spaces has an ever-changing vitality. A ventilation core at the centre of the design allow for full flow-through ventilation and heat stack effects, aided by operable louvres, and shutters and blinds set to solar clocks. In this way, air-conditioning is kept to a minimum.

The layering of the design allows the house to respond to external needs and pressures – for privacy, for views over the river and incoming sun. The house presents a heavily articulated and screened façade to the north and west while peeling back to the river views to the south. A dramatic glass-end plunge pool cantilevered over the entry provides a centre for life in the house. Around it are arranged a rich palette of materials. Solid, playful zinc-walled elements juxtapose the light weathering Jarrah follies, which serve different programmatic needs within the house, from exterior decking to ceilings and internal joinery, and the internal linings of cupboards.

Indeed, all of the materials play multiple roles in the house, giving it a thematic unity. White off-form concrete, for instance, is used on the external façade as well as being expressed internally in selective panels to contrast the softer finishes. The interface between materials is almost always off-set or expressed in a way that definitively marks the change of purpose.

Due to the nature of the materials selected, the construction sequence and protection of works became a major part of the project planning. The white offform concrete was a material that required particularly delicate handling, as it required the reinforcing to be galvanized as well as a special release oil to be used to avoid staining of its pure white surface.

The Brisbane RAIA in commending the project praised its sense of drama and confident application of technical knowledge. “It is clear that the client, the architects, builders and craftsmen have approached this project with enthusiasm, skill and gusto. While the same budget might easily have been expended on a much larger house on a much larger site, the sheer richness of the outcome here is the result of a condensed focus of attention on the smallest and finest of details.” +

PHOTOGRAPHY by Scott Burrows, Aperture Photography

1 The need for privacy is achieved by a design that moves upwards in layers, taking advantage of height freedoms seldom encountered in residential projects. 2 White off-form concrete, timber and glass combine to make a bold, visually intriguing, and yet elegant façade. 3 The swimming pool is a centre for life in the house, for adults and children alike, as well as for its design aesthetics. 4 Cloaked in Jarrah, the indoor/outdoor living areas are bright and casual, and help to make the vista an integral part of the home. 5 Carrying through with the modular design of the home, different areas are symbolically segmented by a shift in matrials, from the off-form white concrete, to timber and glass.