A towering hedge on a seemingly typical suburban street in Melbourne’s north-east conceals a dramatic cascading bushland at the site’s rear. Here, Studio Bright’s design for a new house uses built form and landscape to sensitively mediate these two differing contexts: one wild, the other manicured.
Echoing the existing hedge, a series of blockwork garden walls have been employed as a key design device to control views, choreograph circulation and define a sequence of north-facing outdoor rooms. The garden walls are linear and rational, directing a formal axis towards the entry of the house. Sarah Hicks’s design for the landscape here is, by contrast, loose. Long grasses dissolve the hard edges, with plants sprouting through the paving.
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The second outdoor room, on grade with the home’s floor level, serves as an entry forecourt and the home’s primary habitable outdoor space. It’s ostensibly a backyard that’s sandwiched between the house and another outdoor room, afforded privacy from both the suburban street and the public parkland.
Mirroring this space to the rear and interfacing the bushland is an unfurnished, manicured patch of grass – not a traditional backyard, but a place to admire the outlook, connected to the earth without dominating or replicating.
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The house itself is modestly clad in cement sheet and cloaked in a metal screen engulfed by creepers, making the architecture subservient to the landscape. This arbour functions as a device to provide shade, protect the house from wind and create a deep threshold between inside and out.
Adopting a T-shape plan, the house is arranged with a long east-west wing – comprising sleeping quarters, wet areas and a long spine of study desks and bench seat joinery – oriented towards the northern light, and a shorter leg, housing the primary living spaces, oriented towards the western bushland view. The main bedroom, located at the tip of the plan, is fortunate to benefit from both aspects. With the topography peeling away at the rear, the bedroom is suspended in the treetops, creating a feeling of being fully submerged in the bush.
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The materials and colours of the interiors throughout reflect the architecture and landscape: exposed light-grey blockwork, deep greens and rich, dark timbers. Framed views, both narrow and expansive, provide various views through to the garden, neighbouring properties and the bushland beyond.
As a model for detached single residential architecture, Hedge and Arbour House demonstrates a fresh approach grounded in an innovative composition of outdoor spaces and a meaningful engagement of built form with landscape and context.
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