Keynote curves
This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 5.
As much as they are about energy economies, sustainable houses are very much about atmospheres.
With all the established sustainable design precepts of good insulation, design orientation that maximises and holds sunlight gain in winter, the capture and careful use of water, and the use of recycled or sustainable building materials, the best sustainable houses have a characteristic sensual ambience that makes them feel very alive.
They are internally quiet. Yet even in the hottest weather they breathe fresh air via cleverly-placed, cross-ventilating windows and heat chimneys that encourage the release of unwanted warmth up and out of the house. This process is, of course, reversed in winter when their closed sun-drenched interiors imbue captured heat back into reliably-temperate rooms.
This new inner Melbourne house belonging to semi-retired neuroscience academics Jenny and Dexter, and designed by Zen Architects principal Ric Zen, is just such a house. While it may be new, it invariably has an uncanny established, settled-in feeling through being anchored so securely to the earth via the thermal-holding concrete slabs that form the basis of its structure.
It is given an extra dimension of sensuality through the use of strong structural curves that coil through and define the downstairs rooms of this two bedroom house with two upstairs studies, four courtyards and bookcases wherever they could practically be placed.
Ric Zen says that the house is basically square. And from the streetscape of Victorian villas, the two-storey facade presents as inscrutable planes of aerated concrete wall panels and square windows. It is new and different to the local housing stock but softly, unobtrusively so.
Once inside however, the curvilinear sensations take over as a curved wall of vertical wood battens defines the master bedroom suite and leads along the hallway past a courtyard which has a curving statement water feature.
In the open-space living/kitchen/dining area there is a curved kitchen bench set opposite a long sweep of curving glass windows that invite the greenery of the courtyard inside.
The sweeping wall of three-metre high, north-facing, faceted windows framed in Victorian ash “was expensive to do” says Ric. “But it was all about capturing the sun”.
It was also about capturing the main tenet of the brief which, apart from emphasising sustainability, was for “a garden house that had open living spaces, privacy, ceiling height and light.”
Having lived in a high-maintenance, south-facing house previously, Dexter says a bright, low-maintenance house was critical. Jenny says “we wanted to downsize but weren’t prepared for an apartment. It had to feel as though it had a lot of garden and light.”
And so it is. Courtyards take up one quarter of the building envelope and are planted with roses, herbs, miniature citrus trees, grapevines, grevillea, native grasses and groundcovers. The courtyards also work as natural heat sinks, absorbing heat when needed. Ferns and water plants feature in the inner courtyard to fully embrace the entire downstairs in greenery.
