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Corner House is an exploration of intersections.

For our clients, the project signified a profound moment of change in their lives, marking their retirement from respective architectural careers and a relocation from Melbourne to the Mornington Peninsula. They wanted a home that would facilitate a new chapter that prioritised both their connection and independence. Practically speaking, they wanted two bedrooms and two bathrooms, the capacity to work from home, ample shelving for their extensive design library and beautiful spaces to showcase their art collection. With one of the clients being a UK expat, prior to COVID, they expected family and friends to regularly visit, so it was important to include an area that would provide guests with a sense of their own space where they could comfortably stay for an extended period of time.

On top of this, the site itself had its own requirements. Despite its proximity to the picturesque coastline of the Mornington Peninsula, the immediate context was next to a busy road in Flinders. The suburban surroundings with neighbouring houses called for a carefully considered strategy that would limit the home’s exposure to the adjacent streets.

This inspired a new intersection: instead of existing amongst an external environment, the Corner House turns inward and centres on an internal landscape. A dark façade made of fibre cement-cladding, buffers the inhabitants from noisy traffic and curious neighbours and focuses the lived experience around a large private courtyard. The façade references the board and batten detail of typical Flinders fishing cottages, whilst a hint of timber lining highlights the entry threshold to the street.

With a ceiling height of over 4 metres, the entrance pulls you into the house where an experimental floor plan awaits: living areas positioned in each corner of the dwelling connected by stepped walkways acting as gallery spaces. This layout encourages new routines to emerge as the clients settle into both the house and their retirement.

We avoided the often rigid division of doors and walls to create a range of opportunities for different modes of occupation, exploring how the structure can simultaneously connect and separate its occupants. The floor plan is unique in how it achieves this rich and dynamic range of experiences, facilitated by a gradual ascent from the airy entry space and study, to the more intimate kitchen, dining and living spaces at the rear of the site.

The courtyard plays a crucial role in all of these areas. Designed by Openwork, it carefully considers the architecture that it borders, complementing the interior spaces with this external (yet internal) world. The floral composition consciously juxtaposes with the environment of Flinders, and the Chinese Tallow, Dogwood and Adriatic Fig trees that live in the courtyard will all shift colour with the passing seasons. Openwork view their chosen flora as a suggestive guide for the clients to focus their future planting, providing the occupants with a space to explore their retirement, where they will gradually develop the garden over coming years.

The colours of the trees, the different heights of the plants, the ground cover and leaves all offer complementary textures and tones when looking across the site to other areas of the house. The courtyard also provides a shortcut to these spaces, including an external access to the guest area in the lower level of the house. At under 200m2, the Corner House is a relatively modest home that manages to generate a variety of experiences and relationships within a small number of spaces. It is innately sustainable due to the SIPS construction methodology, and the high performance double glazed BINQ timber windows inspires a high thermal performance.

Location
: Flinders, VIC

Builder: PMV Built

Construction: Structural Insulated Panel

Size: 170m2

Completed: 2020

Photography: Rory Gardiner

Awards: Commendation / Residential Architecture / The Design Files Awards. Winner / Residential New Up to $1M / ArchiTEAM Awards. Winner / Harold Desbrowe-Annear Awards for Residential Architecture / Houses (New) / Victorian Architecture Awards. Shortlisted / New House Under 200m2 / Houses Awards. Shortlisted / The Living Space / INDE Awards.

Professionals used in
Corner House

About the
Professional

Archier creates engaging architectural spaces and bespoke products, with an emphasis on honest, responsive design and efficient construction.

ARCHIER is an architectural practice with studios in Hobart and Melbourne. We work across residential and commercial sectors and have a particular interest in the relationship between architecture and landscape. We are a privately owned company and have four principals. One of our four directors is also Landscape Architect and this gives us a unique skill-set to work seamlessly across the two domains of Architecture and Landscape.

We work across a range of scales; for a range of clients. Our work encompasses residential, commercial and government architecture; public and private landscape projects; as well as the design and manufacture of furniture and lighting products

Our innovative designs are focused on material honesty, thermal performance and constructability, as we strive for affordable and responsive architecture that contributes to the public domain.

We are interested in projects that span architecture, urban design and landscape and embrace the mantra that design is delivery. Our practice utilises BIM extensively to automate and streamline our design work-flow and we are increasingly leveraging BIM to not only aid and support the delivery and construction of our work; we are also using it directly with Off Site Manufacturers to automate the production of timber based floor, wall and roof elements directly from the coordinated design model.

Our directors have over 25 years of combined industry experience and were drawn together to create an inclusive practice that is truly outcome orientated. We have won awards across a range of disciplines connected to the built environment that recognise our design excellence and innovation, along with our commitment to sustainable buildings and the environment.

As a practice, we have worked on large scale commercial projects with a construction value in excess of $100M through Joint Venture arrangements with Hayball Architects and we have lead multidisciplinary teams for complex commercial projects over $5M in value.

We relish the opportunity to work collaboratively with clients and large project teams to incorporate specialist knowledge and expertise into our work. We are data driven and focused on quality project outcomes. We have proven project experience leading complex projects in sensitive environments and have been recognised for our contextual approach to design.

We have also been awarded for our approach to sustainability and always seek not only to optimise the thermal performance of our buildings, but also to consider the life cycle cost of our material choices.