Image Credit : Tatjana Plitt Photography
Project Overview
Mt Eliza House is a compact, accessible, energy efficient home designed for two passionate environmentalists who were looking to downsize and move closer to Mt Eliza Village. Designed specifically for aging-in-place, this house harnesses the sun and prevailing winds and is intrinsically linked to the reinstated indigenous landscape of its site.
Interior living spaces run the length of the block, opening up to the north and backyard, funneling ample daylight into the interior of the home. In our client Ann's words, the 'large lounge room window frames a grassy woodland garden where the setting sun bathes indigenous grasses and trees in iridescence.'
The garden continues right out to the nature strip at the front of the property, setting the home apart in the street and allowing Ann and John to enjoy their passion for restoring the indigenous vegetation to the site. Combined with generous windows in the front of the home, long vistas through the grassy woodland surround John and Ann in their creation.
'The crafting of this home and its indigenous garden was our way of bringing soul to an urban setting and interpreting our long-established lifestyle', Ann explains. 'For us, the new home breaks down the barrier between traditional habitation and the natural world. In our older years, this property provides great solace.'
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
ARCHITECTURE PROJECT TEAM: Paul Porjazoski, Rob Chittleborough, Merran Porjazoski, Michael Germano, Tilde Sheppard
INTERIOR DESIGN: BENT Architecture
LANDSCAPE DESIGN: Ann Scholes (client)
BUILDER: Bede Debenham
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: MTO Engineers P/L
PHOTOGRAPHY: Tatjana Plitt
STYLING: Pip+Coop
Project Brief
Our clients, John and Ann, are passionate environmentalists who love design. They approached us with their brief to design a compact, accessible, energy-efficient home that would support them for years to come, even as they aged. The key functional requirement of this house was accessibility; no steps or level changes on the ground plane, accessible doorways and bathrooms. In keeping with John and Ann’s passion for the environment, the home comes complete with an expansive PV array and battery storage ensure that the home is a net energy producer; a 43,000-litre water tank hidden beneath the garden in the rear yard sustains household and garden needs.
Saying goodbye to their large garden and leafy outlook was a challenge for John and Ann, so the design of their new home was conceived as a living space surrounded by greenery. Large windows opening onto the garden retain that sense of nature and the outdoors and it's easy to forget the home is in an average suburban street. The living areas run the length of the block and open to the north side and the backyard, bringing huge amounts of light into the home. In Ann's words, the 'large lounge room window frames a grassy woodland garden where the setting sun bathes indigenous grasses and trees in iridescence.' A courtyard in the centre of the home enhances the feeling of being surrounded by nature and is a perfect spot for some of the ferns John and Ann brought from their previous house.
Project Innovation/Need
Australians are living longer and enjoying health and fitness long into their retirement. As people age, restricted mobility means that the home can become more of an impediment than a comfort. People often turn to institutionalized care to address this issue; however, this usually leads to being removed from both home and community. By designing homes that allow people to live more independently well into their senior years, we can maintain their sense of dignity and provide an opportunity for them to remain connected to their place in a broader sense. The Mt Eliza House is designed specifically for this purpose. Our clients, John and Ann, approached us with their brief to design a compact, accessible, energy-efficient home that would support them for years to come. They had been living on a large, sloping, heavily wooded site in Mt Eliza and had purchased land closer to Mt Eliza Village which would allow them to walk to important local amenities, allowing them to live independently for longer. Saying goodbye to their large garden and leafy outlook was a challenge for John and Ann, so the design of their new home was conceived as a living space surrounded by greenery. 'The crafting of this home and its indigenous garden was our way of bringing soul to an urban setting and interpreting our long-established lifestyle', Ann explains. 'For us, the new home breaks down the barrier between traditional habitation and the natural world. In our older years, this property provides great solace.'
Design Challenge
As people age, restricted mobility means that the home can become more of an impediment than a comfort. People often turn to institutionalized care to address this issue; however, this usually leads to being removed from both home and community. We must design homes in a manner that will allow people to live more independently well into their senior years, allowing them to maintain their sense of dignity and provide an opportunity for them to remain connected to their place in a broader sense. In this context, the challenge was to design an accessible home which is uplifting and reflective of our clients’ passion for the environment and good design. Our clients previously lived on a heavily wooded sloping site in the Mt Eliza hills. Our challenge was to create a home which had a similar feel on a flat site in suburban Mt Eliza. We overcame that by positioning the living zone in the center of the site, ensuring it had good orientation and enough space around its perimeter for substantial vegetation, creating a sense of living amongst plentiful greenery. Our client, Ann, is an avid gardener and environmentalist and brought many of the plants with her from her previous home. She does lots of work in the local community with re-vegetation of the local landscape and this was her passion – to have the expression of the indigenous planting which she re-established across the site ‘win out’ in the experience of her home.
Sustainability
The Mt Eliza house demonstrates excellence in environmentally sustainable design. The home is designed along an east-west axis, with living spaces oriented to face the northern sun for passive heating and opposing north-south windows facilitate passive cooling. Timbercrete bricks are employed extensively on the ground floor; they are an eco-friendly, light-weight brick made of waste timber and masonry binders. Accoya is a cradle-to-cradle certified sustainable timber that is used for wall cladding inside and out.
An expansive PV array and battery storage allows mechanical heating and cooling systems to be sustainably operated, without the need for natural gas (which was abolished from the site). In fact, the home is a net energy producer. A 43,000-litre water tank hidden beneath the garden in the rear yard sustains household and garden needs.
The Mt Eliza House built upon the pre-established design language of Walter Burleigh and Marion Mahony Griffin’s Ranleigh Estate, further strengthening the relationship between the house and its landscape, beginning with the idea of living spaces centrally positioned within the landscape of the site, and carried through to the re-introduction of indigenous planting across the site (in keeping with our clients’ passion for re-vegetation of the local area).
Architecture - Residential - Constructed
This award celebrates 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.
More Details