Projects
North Lakes
Brief:
A compact single storey house on a 640 square metre site for a couple, comprising 3 bedrooms, one of which is to be used as a home office; a media room, combined open plan living kitchen and dining room; separate bathroom and wc; double garage and covered hardstand for a boat. 5000 litre rainwater tank for use in washing down the boat. Another series of tanks to supply 8500 litres of rainwater to the house and for the pool & garden.
Town Planning response:
North Lakes is supported by a stringent design covenant with a view to maintaining a high standard of design in this community. Guidelines relate to choice of materials and shapes, and maximum allowable site cover, as well as design factors to maintain street appeal and surveillance. The covenant forms part of the Moreton Bay Shire’s Town Plan. The architectural plans were lodged, successfully, for covenant approval with Stock;and prior to lodgement with the building certifier.
Architectural response:
The architectural response focuses on the central axis of spaces that begins at the front gate and continues in a linear fashion, up to the rear fence and beyond.
The spatial sequence commences at the front gate, where visitors are received into a walled and paved courtyard. Visitors proceed under a covered verandah and into the Entry. From the Entry, the eye is drawn right through to the outdoor areas at the end of the axis. As one moves along the wide entry hall, under a low ceiling, the space suddenly opens up into a double height combined Living Dining & Kitchen pavilion whose raked ceiling profile sails out, through wall dissolving full height glazing, over a north facing patio, doubling the apparent size of the indoor space. This space keeps on continuing to the open pool deck. There is a tree reserve beyond the pool area, suggesting that the site continues indefinitely. In this way, the pool deck’s function goes beyond swimming: the whole area provides a visual focus to the internal spaces, so that even from inside, the eye is drawn beyond and into the outdoors.
Then there are the more private Bedrooms, Media Room and Home Office are off to the sides of this open central axis. They also interact with these open spaces, albeit more discreetly. Architecturally, the Home Office and the Front Courtyard are indoor and outdoor complementary parts of the one space. The Bedrooms are located on the north of the house, in private wings to either side of the main living pavilion. They are enlivened by natural lighting to three sides; in this way, they read as mini pavilions of their own. The north glazing opens up to more intimate verandahs, under pergolas, which also have a view to the pool deck. Again, the architecture suggests that the verandahs and the bedrooms are complementary halves of the one indoor/outdoor space.
Outcomes:
For a house with a compact floor plan,it feels more spacious because the spaces have been treated as a sequence of volumes which have been shaped to express their level of privacy and publicness. Then, these have been arranged along a linear axis to keep the sense of space flowing right through the site.
Also, those volumes vary in response to their private or public functions, by varying their degree of openness, from the fully open to sky front entry courtyard and rear pool deck, to semi-open pergola spaces off the bedrooms, to the fully covered double height central verandah; then into the fully enclosed internal spaces.
Although the internal floor area covers 50% of the site area, all available space has been designed to read as a continuous whole from the front gate to the rear boundary and beyond.