Inside a Garden House That Is Centred Around A Beautiful Courtyard (House Tour)

Located in the rural town of Yackandandah, Victoria, Court House by Archier is a garden house that is built for clients who were returning to the town for a change of pace. As such, the clients wanted a passive house that was sustainable and could last for generations. Built on a prominent slice of land, Court House sits across from the public pool and just above the local courthouse – from which its name originates. However, with a road that runs around the outside of the family home, as well as being exposed to the elements, Court House came with some difficulties that were embraced by architects. Furthermore, the vegetation around the garden house is in differing stages of regrowth, which will eventually shield the architecture of the home from outside elements.

Organised around a rear entry, the home tour begins by entering in through the side of the garden house. Upon walking into the family home, the tour reveals a courtyard that the building is centred around and is the heart of the home. From the entry, the residence circulates around the courtyard with sliding doors that allow for the clients – who are avid gardeners – to enjoy an element of indoor-outdoor living. Additionally, shown through the garden house tour, the courtyard separates the design of the home, which places the kitchen, dining and sitting spaces on the northern side of the property, while all of the bedrooms are positioned on the southern side. Moreover, with the public spaces on one side and the private spaces on the other, Court House emphasises and balances the connection between community and retreat.

Drawing from the local palette, Archier has designed the exterior of Court House with timber and uses galvanised steel on the roof. Throughout the interior design, the team uses painted structural and insulated panels for the walls and a ceiling lined with local timber to create warmth. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows and concrete floors are heated up by the northern sun during the morning and the home features a heat recovery ventilation that allows the garden house to feel fresh and alive throughout the year. With the interior design and architectural details, Court House achieves the base level passive house rating and provides its owners with a smart and efficient building within which to spend their years.

00:00 – Introduction to the Garden House
01:19 – A Location Change and Generational Brief
01:51 – The Challenging and Exposed Site
02:27 – The Layout and Walkthrough of the Home
03:14 – Sustainable and Efficient Design
03:43 – A Local and Layered Material Palette
05:05 – Favourite Aspects and Fond Memories

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Photography by Rory Gardiner.
Architecture by Archier.
Build by Sheringham Constructions.
Structural Engineering by Astleigh Consulting Engineers.
Geotechnical Engineering by B.M Civil Engineers.
Windows by BINQ.
Filmed by The Local Project.
Edited by Selina Mills.
Production by The Local Project.

Location: Yackandandah, Victoria, Australia

In Partnership with Squarespace | https://www.squarespace.com/

The Local Project acknowledges the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Owners of the land in Australia. We recognise the importance of Indigenous peoples in the identity of our country and continuing connections to Country and community. We pay our respect to Elders, past and present and extend that respect to all Indigenous people of these lands.

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This The Local Project video  is sponsored by Squarespace,   the all-in-one platform designed to sell anything. Kitchens and bathrooms come in and out  of fashion but the building envelope,   it’s important that you get that really  right. These buildings are expensive to build,  

They cost the environment quite a lot ,so it’s  important that you build in a way that preserves   the building to pass on to the next generation.  So Archier is really obsessed with how buildings   go together, how we might improve on the status  quo, cause we believe there’s a lot of value in  

That space that’s not tapped. My name is  Chris Gilbert, I’m the director of design   at Archier and we’re sitting in the lovely  Court House out in Yackandandah, Victoria.  Yackandandah is is out in Northeast Victoria about  30 minutes south of the Murray not too far away  

From the ski field, so it’s in this beautiful  little valley and it’s my hometown, I was born   in the local hospital and it’s a space that’s  very special to all of the directors at Archier. So the clients were moving from Melbourne back  up to the Northeast, bit of a tree change,  

So they really wanted a house that was quite  passive in its design and they wanted a really   generational home for them and their children.  So it’s quite a prominent site in the township,   it’s adjacent to the local swimming pool and  it sits right behind the local courthouse,  

Hence the name and just down from the police  station so there was actually a holding cell   located where we’re sitting at the moment. It’s  quite a difficult site as it has a road that runs   around the outside of it and it’s quite exposed  particularly in the winter, but the clients really  

Embraced that challenge because they understood  this was going to be a multigenerational home and   they leant into revegetating the garden and  that’s a really long project and the clients   are really happy to do that cause they’re avid  gardeners but it takes quite a sophisticated  

Client to understand that this building, even  though we finished it a few years ago it won’t   truly be finished for another 15, 20 years. So we  had to organise the building around a rear entry,   so you come down the side of the house you open  the door and you’re presented with a beautiful  

Kind of courtyard in the heart of the house, the  client’s an avid gardener so that was a really   appropriate response, we felt essentially from  there all of the program circulates around that   central courtyard. The courtyard in the middle  of the building separates out the kitchen,  

Dining kind of sitting space on the Northern side  of the building which is also the public side of   the building and then all of the bedrooms  are on the Southern side of the building,   so the the building kind of mediates that  connection between community and retreat. So  

The house actually achieves the kind of base level  passive house rating, and that’s not because we’ve   done anything special it’s just been designed and  detailed in a really kind of smart, efficient way.   We really want to find the most efficient and  best way to build buildings so much so that  

Now we’ve started our own factory and we’re  starting to fabricate buildings in Melbourne,   just so we can completely control from the  forest all the way through to building the house. Quite a lot of the materials on the site were  drawn from the local palette so we’ve got ruttle  

Timber on the outside treated with an osmo oil,  the roof is just a galvanized roof which kind of   meets the Heritage requirements. All of the walls  that you see here are the actual structural sifts   and which we’ve just painted those, and  then we’ve lined the ceiling in a local  

Timber just to create some warmth. Structurally  insulated panels are really fantastic technology,   it’s just two layers of strand orientated  board either side of a foam core, you can   achieve a really great thermal envelope without  many layers of additional airtight membranes  

Etc etc so we found it quite a cost-effective  way to build a super high performance home. Most mornings that North facing  glass heats up the slab enough,   clients very rarely need to put on the heating,  then we’ve got quite deep eaves so in the summer  

Months they get very little solar game onto the  slab and it remains pretty cool all year round. We also have heat recovery ventilation which sucks  all of the old air out of the bathrooms and pushes  

Fresh air into all of the bedrooms so the house  always feels kind of light and fresh and lovely. Favorite part of the building  is the kind of social kitchen,   I’ll sit and have a coffee with Julia and  Craig just watch people kind of walk past  

On the street you know wave and that’s such a  nice way to live, like connected to community   rather than retreating from community and  yeah it’s special because it’s unique. I look back on my childhood in Yackandandah with  so much fondness and joy, being able to provide  

Kind of stage for another family to do that  just means so much it’s really really rewarding. This The Local Project video  is sponsored by Squarespace,   since 2003 Squarespace has helped entrepreneurs  launch their own websites and stand out from the crowd. We’ve been using Squarespace for  approximately 6 years now predominantly,  

To showcase our work on a visual platform  but also to engaging with clients. My website design is really important,  obviously we’re in a very visual industry,   I first chose to build my website with  Squarespace because the website templates   are really aesthetically pleasing and they’re  super easy to use so there’s lots of variation  

To them but you can add your own little bit  of personality and flare and you can just   make it a bit more custom to your brand.  For us it’s really important how the site   links into all the social media platforms which  are ultimately a massive part of our business  

As well and the more interactive these can  be and the better they talk to each other,   the better the results are for us. Squarespace  is the Allin one platform designed to sell   anything from physical products digital  content courses appointments and more.