Small talk with Andrew Maynard
From Sanctuary magazine issue 9. Buy or subscribe.
In this issue, which explores and celebrates the small house, we wanted to challenge a few notions about what constitutes sustainable architecture.
One little talked about approach to sustainable design is “kinetic architecture”, a school of multifunction design. To illustrate how it works, we chose to profile one of its leading practitioners – an architect whose design ethic is challenging some of the received notions of sustainable architecture in Australia.
Andrew Maynard’s Melbourne-based practice has built its reputation on a suite of buildings informed by social, political and environmental concerns. His conceptual work is paradigm-busting, and ranges from a suburb-eating robot; a novel take on the mobile home that challenges our notion of the “fixed address”; and a Styx Valley protest shelter, informed by Andrew’s upbringing in “the forests of Tasmania”.
Maynard’s built works are invariably meditations on these same concerns, while at the same time deeply grounded in site-specific solutions. His designs are compact, well-crafted and unpretentiously progressive. At their core is his rejection of stolid, unchanging spaces in favour of nimble, multi-purpose ones.
While Andrew’s designs may follow climate-responsive design principles, such as good orientation and the inclusion of concrete floors for thermal mass, Andrew sees these principles as a given of good design, rather than the exclusive preserve of sustainable architecture. Nor is the inclusion of, quote, “green gadgets”, such as solar panels or solar hot water, a necessary corollary of virtuous design. Sometimes, he says, they can obscure bad design and act as a type of green washing.
“I don’t subscribe to the idea that you can demolish a perfectly good house to put up a four-bedroom six-star house, add a solar array and a few other ‘green gadgets’ and call it sustainable. Or that you can add a ‘green’ extension to an existing dwelling that is perfectly big enough, and call it sustainable.”
For Andrew, one of the main battles is “trying to talk clients out of adding extra rooms.
“Most clients say that their current spaces aren’t working for them. The status quo solution in Australia is to add more rooms or to knock it down and start again. Australians are addicted to renovations and extensions.”
What Andrew would like to see is architects producing architecture that responds to the changing needs of clients by creating adaptable spaces. He wants extensions and rebuilding considered only as a last resort, instead of the first.
A recent example of Andrew’s work is a home in beachside Anglesea, Victoria. During the briefing process everything was on the table, from rebuilding from the ground up to adding a large extension with extra bedrooms. Eventually these were rejected as neither sustainable nor cost-effective solutions.
Subsequently, plans for an additional bedroom for grandchildren were scaled back to a slimline single-bed bunk room. Another dual-function space – a new living room by the back yard – was designed to convert to a guest room, vastly improving the liveability of the home with a simple, modestly sized gesture.
Kids being kids, the bunk room has had the additional benefit of being a very popular cubby-hole.
Thinking small when you have a roomy rural block runs against the grain for many people, but on most inner-suburban blocks it’s a simple necessity. In the inner-suburbs, therefore, the pursuit of maximal house size is leading people to build on every square metre, which means that gardens are becoming a thing of the past, while courtyards and balconies are the new norm. Andrew’s recent work on an inner-Melbourne terrace allowed him to challenge this trend.
Victorian terraces are notoriously light-starved and cramped, with a series of rooms running off a dark hallway and the toilet and laundry facilities at the back of the house, fronting the yard. The common solution is to add a living-kitchen-dining extension that opens onto the yard, but eats into it. Andrew’s approach was different and novel.
Firstly, he resolved to work within the existing size and fabric of the house – no extension – and realign the living space to foster family life. Then he set about designing creative furnishing and space solutions to maximise the existing space.
If there was one design feature that sums up Andrew’s work best it would probably be the kitchen island he designed for this home. It beautifully illustrates what Andrew sets out to achieve in each project: a unique solution that is both functional and elegant, engendering sustainability through compact design, and fostering social cohesion by bringing the family together.
When clients lay out plans for a kitchen-living area, many decide they need a separate work bench, space for dining table and chairs, storage cupboards and so on, then go about designing a huge kitchen and living area to fit in all these elements. In this design solution, Andrew combines all these elements into a custom-designed kitchen island bench. Combining prep area and cupboard, it also has a lower-level workspace where the children can draw or do their homework in the company of their parents. And at meal times it becomes the dining table, where the family can catch up on the day’s activities.
This home also beautifully illustrates Andrew’s work with kinetic architecture. The garden-facing laundry and bathroom were converted into a multifunctional space that is easily adapted to suit the needs of the clients. Primarily a living space and play room, when guests stay it can be turned into a bedroom with an inexpensive, built-in fold-out bed.
Andrew’s views about the future of building are characteristically honest. “At the moment we tend to rely on increased consumption to solve our problems, which is illogical. We really need to ask ourselves whether we need to change ourselves and our habits before blaming the spaces we currently occupy.
“If a renovation, extension or new build is necessary, then think small and think strategic. Never confuse small with cheap. It’s better to get a budget and spend it on something small that is designed extremely well than use the same budget spread thinly over a large area that performs badly.”
