Over the top
From Sanctuary issue 10. More articles like this
By Rachael Bernstone
Excerpt: When he starts work on a new project, architect Edward Duc of Duc Associates strives for a single idea to underpin his design approach. For Cameron and Sue Wild’s new home at Molong in central New South Wales, the landscape and climate provided Duc’s initial design cues.
“I took into account the views and orientation, and one of the important considerations that Cameron and Sue told me about was the strong southerly winds in the winter, which are particularly unpleasant,” Duc recalls. “So I toyed with various concepts to deal with them, because there are certain times of the year when you want to introduce breezes for cross ventilation, but you also need to mitigate them when conditions are extreme.”
Duc’s initial doodlings led to a steeply pitched roof made of Bondor panels. “I figured that the strong southerly wind would simply blow straight over the top of the house,” Duc explained. “I then added louvred openings in panels at the bottom of the roof, which can be opened to allow gentle southerlies to blow through the house and out of the top of the roof when conditions are favourable.”
As well as protecting its occupants from the wind, the roof provides shade in summer while enabling winter sun to enter the building.
Duc’s selection of non-traditional but readily available home building materials made the house easy for the Wilds to build themselves, and they enhance performance as well. The external walls consist of galvanised corrugated steel cladding lined with sarking, insulation batts and Ortech compressed straw bale panels internally, to achieve an R-value in excess of 5. The Ortech panels also provide acoustic benefits and contain no formaldehyde or additional chemical binders.
Precast concrete walls and the concrete floor provide excellent thermal mass for passive heating and cooling.
In the bathrooms, Seratone wall panels were installed instead of tiles for easy cleaning and installation, and the ceiling in the northern section is constructed using Ceilink 900, making it ideal for installation under single skin roofs.
The limited palette of materials – concrete, glass, aluminium and steel – gives the house a rural industrial aesthetic which is in keeping with its surroundings. “When you approach the house, you go through Molong and out of town, before turning off on a dirt road, and you can see the building in the distance, like a praying mantis,” Duc says. “The closer you get, the more the texture of the louvres comes through, and you gain a gradual introduction to the house with little tasters and simple statements as you get nearer.”
The simplicity of steel assembly was another significant benefit, the architect says. “The fact the Wilds were owner-builders partly informed my design,” Duc says. “One of the advantages of using post and beam construction is the separation of trades: once you pour the slab, erect the frame and put the roof on, you can build the other elements without having to adhere to a sequential order, which is one of the challenges of current building practice. Regular building systems are not an efficient process at all.”
For his part, wool-broker turned owner-builder Cameron Wild says the construction was mostly straightforward. “My father and brother are both builders, and a few years ago, I gave up wool broking and worked with a builder on the restoration of a pise (rammed earth) homestead,” he says. “On our house, I built all the external cladding and internal walls, and employed steel fabricators, plumbers and glaziers to help me.
“From a budget perspective, the end result was good, but it took longer than I thought it would – three years instead of a planned 18 months,” he explains.
The Wilds are especially happy with their elevated position and the fact the house works with its climate. “It’s great to come home,” Wild says. “It’s a very comfortable space to live in, with the open-plan lounge, dining area and kitchen and our bedroom all opening up to the view. It’s like a camping out with modern conveniences.”
