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OR VIEW ALL PROJECTSOR GO BACK TO SEARCH RESULTSOR VIEW ALLPROJECTS BY ARCHITECT STEPHEN JOLSONHOUSE PROJECTS2009 PROJECTSPROJECTS IN MELBOURNE |
This city residence by architect Stephen Jolson, is commissioned by a semi-retiredcouple, possesses a handsome and cryptic facade concealing an interior arrangement of spaces that seem to extend beyond the square metres that define them. Jolson carefully programmed a design that maximizes both useable floor area and internal light penetration.
"The project is about the precise carving of a residence into a landlocked site with limited opportunities for boundary windows," Jolson quotes. Accordingly, he assumed extensive groundwork to sink the two-storey house into its landscape. It's a rectilinear structure atypical of its neo-Georgian neighbourhood. The clean planar facade is level with adjoining fence heights and "from the outside you would have no idea what's inside," Jolson says.
An oversized grey anodized aluminium door creates a recessed shadow within the white facade. Jolson presses a solitary button hidden in the expansive metal surface, prompting a six-sided door to withdraw and reveal the entry vestibule - a radiant four-and-a-half-metre-high rectangular composition of light and glass. The travertine starcase zigzags upward from the entry like the processional steps of an Aztec temple. A transparent glazed wall cleaves the stair in two; on the exterior half, water cascades down the treads.
At the top of the stair the scale of the house finally reveals itself. The upper floor is a single rectangular volume expressed as a vast expanse of travertine, topped with walls the colour of creative anglais. Plaster colonnades and partial walls that delineate the individual rooms punctuate the open rectangle. From the stair-top vantage point the visitor can peer straight through four rooms including the kitchen, dining, living and master bedroom.
The rear edges of the rectangular volume are set a metre away from masonry retaining walls that are sunk a full storey into the site, forming a light corridor for the windowless rooms deep in the interior. Retaining walls are painted the same golden-cream shade as the interior walls and the outside floor is paved with the same travertine used inside. The continuation of materials from inside to outdoors creates a peripheral optical illusion - with nothing to interrupt it visually, the footprint of the house appears to reach to the site boundary. Sunlight falls through the gap between the top of the retaining walls and the eaves, flooding the light corridor and spilling sunshine across the pale marble floor.
A trinity of travertine, polished plaster and Florentine bronze is highlighted with furniture upholstered with natural linens and aniline leathers, a palette deployed in every room. "It's all about simplicity and honesty and keeping everything pared back and tranquil. It's a very calming house." A square, double-storey light atrium penetrates the centre of the house to the basement level. At its bottom lies a shallow wet-edge pond, from the middle of which sprouts a twisting, ten-metre-high bronze sculpture by Australian artist Andrew Rogers. Moist air carries the sound of tricking water into the inner reaches of the house. "The central courtyard becomes a ventilation stack, creating air motion throughout the dwelling," Jolson notes. It also facilitates natural illumination, which seeps through many of the adjacent rooms, both upstairs and downstairs.
Jolson House Image Gallery
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