Simple pleasures
This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 6.
With many people expecting luxury tropical getaways to offer five-star air-conditioned comfort, it was always going to be a risky proposition to build an environmentally-friendly bed and breakfast in the outskirts of Broome.
But when Paradigm Architects were approached to design such a place, despite the extreme weather conditions and remote location, Fiona Hogg had no hesitation in accepting the challenge.
Fiona, now based in Perth, worked in Darwin and Cairns for years so the prospect of designing a sustainable building in Broome was not that daunting.
“I knew we could do it, even though many people don’t realise that in Broome, as well as the heat, you also have to contend with cool winds coming off the desert, so it can make things tricky.”
“The other issue was that the site, while extremely beautiful, is quite remote. It is further up the coast beyond Cable Beach and set behind a tidal influenced lagoon,” she says.
Fiona says the property was built using a mixture of recycled and plantation timbers with a steel portal frame that is cyclone proof. The building is designed to be opened up during severe storms so that winds move through it, rather than having a destructive effect.
“With cyclones you either design a building to be a place that you can bunker down in or you allow it to be opened up and when a really big storm comes through, say every 10 years, you leave it behind and find shelter. The wind and rain goes through it, but the building is still there at the end.”
Timber louvers were used extensively to minimise the use of glass, because in extreme climates glass tends to increase heat loads. “Timbers are an insulating product and they tend to absorb heat rather than reflect and magnify it,” she says.
‘I really like the fact that the main living space has been designed to be a big veranda. There is no airconditioning and this big shaded area with a concrete thermal mass really tends to suck all the heat out of the space. The central area is cool because you get the breeze sweeping over the concrete and it acts like a refrigerator.
