Image Credit : John Gollings
Project Overview
The Harold Street Residence is a new dwelling located in a Middle Park heritage overlay precinct on the north-west corner of the Neville and Harold Street intersection. The surrounding context is predominantly single storey Victorian terraces. Our response engages with the site’s heritage context through its architectural form and detailing, explores the public/private nature of the corner site, and completes the intersections ‘fourth corner’.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Design Architect - Jackson Clements Burrows Architects
Structural Engineers - BHS Consultants
Landscape Architects - Eckersley Garden Architecture
Lighting Consultants - Light Project
Project Brief
The brief called for a new residence for a couple with university age children that would accommodate their evolving family needs. The ground floor provides the primary residence for our clients, engaging both with the street and garden, whilst the upper level provides more flexible living areas and bedrooms for their children, visitors and grandchildren.
The siting strategy locates the building along the Neville Street edge of the site, effectively mirroring the other three corners of the intersection. This enabled the creation of a long garden on the northern and more private half of the site. On this northern facade, a more sculptured interface is created, providing a varied engagement between the garden and living areas.
Project Need
The twisting form of the zinc clad roof was chosen to reconcile the building with its single storey surrounding context and the requirements of the clients brief. To the Harold Street frontage, this form can be viewed as an abstracted version of the pediments and gables of surrounding roof scapes, and allows the house to be perceived as single storey at the corner entry. The roof sweeps upwards from the corner along the Neville Street frontage following both the natural movement through the house and the programmatic requirements of the internal spaces.
The detailing to the external facades offers a rich engagement with the heritage detailing of the adjacent properties. Whilst the brickwork along Neville Street provides a robust public edge to the house, the surface is further articulated with ‘hit and miss’ brick detailing and Webforge screening. These gestures are complimentary to the Victorian fretwork and decorative detailing that defines the ambience of the sites context, but also provides scale and articulation to the wall plane, screening and security to the street edge, cross flow ventilation and cooling, and diffuse light to the internal spaces. At night the detailing allows the condition to reverses and the building glows invitingly to the street.
Design Challenge
Given the prominent corner site, the project offered a unique opportunity for a private house to engage at an urban design level. The roof’s sweeping form abstracts the local vernacular, seeks to reconcile the new two storey dwelling within its single storey context and also deal with the programmatic requirements of the brief. The brickwork facade reflects the three existing corners of the intersection, but the detailing provides perforation to the street edge that challenges the typical delineation between public and private space.
Sustainability
The house achieves a five star energy rating through robust detailing and a simple palette of high performing materials. Double skin external wall construction offers high thermal performance, with the brickwork offering a virtually maintenance façade finish. Along with a heavily insulated roof, these serve to reduce heating and cooling requirements throughout the year. All windows are double glazed and fitted with high performing solar control glass. North facing windows also have automated external louvered blinds to reduce heat gain during summer. Webforge screening in combination with polycarbonate sheeting to the western façade provides a thermal and solar screen to the living spaces exposed to the afternoon sun. Solar water heating and LED lighting has also been utilized to reduce energy loads during day to day client use.
Rainwater is harvested from the twisting roof and stored in a 40,000L basement tank. This water is used for grey water flushing, ponds and provides irrigation for the predominantly drought tolerant landscaping. An internal pond and courtyard have been utilized to provide cooling through cross flow ventilation to ground floor living areas in summer months.
Architecture - Residential - Constructed
This award recognises the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow. The project must be constructed.
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