The Boulevard banner
Project by
Year of completion
2023
Project cost
$2m - $3m
Building plans
The Boulevard - Plan Presentation Ground

Our clients bought the site for its proximity to the beautiful Yarra Flats parklands. With three children, it was important this house could nurture the family as it evolves. The garden and the surrounding environment were important to ensure their children can develop a relationship with nature while living 20 minutes from the city.

Throughout the design process we asked ourselves how can we maximise the surrounding landscape? The result is a house that’s predominantly underground, overcoming the challenge of a steep topography by building into the hillside, concealing the structure as much as possible, and using the garden to extend the environment of the Yarra Flats into the site.

From the perspective of the street, the house is largely hidden, offering passers-by a panorama of the Yarra in a neighbourhood with houses that typically obscure views.

From the garage and roof-top guest parking at the top of the site, winding landscape stairs with adjacent stone channel water feature descends through foliage to the entry hall, which is lined with windows looking out over the back garden.

The kitchen is to the left, with dual island benchtops and a dining area that extends to a living-room. An internal courtyard provides afternoon light and connects to the roof garden through a tall gumtree.

From the entry to the right, a hallway leads to a rumpus room, and then on to the private wing – the master bedroom with ensuite, and stairs down to the lower level that consists of a bathroom, laundry and the three children’s bedrooms. The separation between the upper and lower bedrooms will increase in importance as the children age and independence grows.

This private wing of the house extends out from the hillside. It is not hidden under landscape, instead a gabled roof references the idea of what a house looks like in a child’s mind. The roof is covered with stone slate tiles, a response to a local covenant that creates a connection between the houses of the neighbourhood.

We encouraged the clients to embrace a small yet efficient floorplan — to decrease the building’s impact and cost — thus the relationship with the surrounding garden is crucial to the house’s spacious feel, accentuated by the extensive use of operable glass, as well as the views between spaces across internal courtyards. As the house is buried in the landscape, the surrounding earth offers thermal support that increases the structural efficiency and sustainability.

We collaborated with Ben Scott Garden Design to create a garden that integrates the native vegetation of the adjacent parklands. We covered most of the buildings with green roofs, with plants draping over the edges, so the occupants always feel connected to their environment.

The Boulevard is a four bedroom home that embraces, enhances and extends the ecosystem of the surrounding environment.

We collaborated with Ben Scott Garden Design to create a garden that integrates the native vegetation of the adjacent parklands. We covered most of the buildings with green roofs, with plants draping over the edges, so the occupants always feel connected to their environment. TGA Engineers and Resicon were crucial collaborators in the intricate build, as was Sarah Trotter’s consultation on the interior finishes.

Awards and
recognition

2023
Archier
Shortlisted / Residential Architecture – Houses (New) / Victorian Architecture
2023
Archier
Shortlisted / New House over 200m2 / Houses Awards
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Professionals used in
The Boulevard

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.