The good life
From Sanctuary magazine issue 9. Buy or subscribe.
By Rachael Bernstone
Life in Melbourne was good for architect Ryan Strating and his partner Minky, but they still yearned for a better quality of life in a rural community near the ocean.
When Ryan’s partner in his architecture practice, Core Collective, applied for a job at the UTAS Architecture School in Launceston, the seeds were sown.
After researching extensively, Ryan and Minky also decided to relocate to Tasmania, to Woodbridge, a gorgeous coastal hamlet overlooking Bruny Island, half an hour’s drive south of Hobart.
It wasn’t long before they’d found their ideal property, a 2.5 hectare parcel of land with a 1906 home and a ramshackle shed out the back. They bought it, and quickly life settled into a charming routine. Trips to local restaurant Peppermint Bay for coffee. Strolling along Birch’s Bay beach with the dog. And jaunts on a Raleigh bicycle, lent to Ryan by a friend. “It’s a lovely bike and good for riding the 1.5 kilometre round trip to the post office when I feel like it needs a run,” Ryan says. “That happens every few weeks and definitely only on sunny days.”
Woodbridge was also the perfect region to indulge Ryan’s fascination with rural agricultural buildings. He loved walking around region studying their elegant, practical forms.
Explaining his fascination with the old buildings, for Ryan cites their “eccentric roof pitches” with one open side facing away from the weather (and towards the sun); that they are made with reused materials – “whatever’s at hand, layered claddings patching up worn areas”; and the way they tend to grow organically as the needs of the farmer change. He amassed a collection of photographs and says he would one day would like to undertake a formal research project on the subject.
Ryan’s wanderings also inspired his design practice. The way that the local sheds were constructed and adapted found him wanting to emulate their aesthetic in his designs. So when he outgrew his home studio, it was an obvious progression for Ryan to turn his attention to the ramshackle shed in the yard.
While many people would have decided to demolish the shed and start again, Ryan’s environmental sensibilities, his tastes and interests, led him to see the shed’s potential. He set about transforming the shed into his very own “green” studio and Woodbridge architectural archetype.
His first step was to keep the exterior as is, in sympathy with other sheds in the area. ‘With the exterior we just patched a couple of boards,” says Ryan.
The interior was another story. “When we moved here, it was just a falling down old shed, it had air and water leaking in, it was full of rats and spiders and old junk, and it had a slight lean to one side. When we renovated we totally transformed the inside. It still has the slight lean but the inside is completely gutted and relined. Like a building within a building – an efficient heart in an old skin.”
First Ryan lined the shed with insulation. Then a local carpenter built a pine stud frame inside the weatherboard casing, which had the dual purpose of framing the new interior walls and stabilising the outer shell.
Extra insulation in the stud wall, floor and roof gave the building a thermal rating of around R3.5, which, Ryan says, makes it warmer on cold mornings than the adjacent house. A new double-glazed window in a recycled timber frame was inserted into the slightly enlarged opening on the northern side, offering views over the garden and flooding the studio with natural light.
The studio boasts low energy lighting, low VOC paint, and Marmoleum flooring in a rich red colour. “The Marmoleum tiles are easy to lay yourself, so I did all that, and they are also easier to clean than carpet, which is great because I am allergic to dust mites,” Ryan says.
Water is collected off the shed roof for reuse elsewhere (the property is not connected to mains water) and Ryan has planted local trees and shrubs, including ti tree and banksias, around the house and studio.
Having completed his low-cost “vernacular” studio, Ryan is now turning his attention to a new home for his family, which will naturally embody the same principles. “We like to make beautiful buildings, which are technically elegant, simple and ecologically sound,” he says. “This shed reuses an old beautifully proportioned building to create a great, comfortable space to work in – and it was cheaper than building new. It also means I can work close to where I live, so I don’t have a long commute and can spend time with my family.”
