R House

Conceived as a series of wraps, straps and ribbons that bifurcate to allow programmes to emerge within the spaces created, this addition and alteration to an existing house adds volume and coordinates human movement. The existing house is a two storey Cape-Cod style block-veneer house built in the early 1960's. Its lower level house the living, dining kitchen and laundry facilities and the upper level has three small bedrooms and a shared bathroom. The upper level is concealed within a mock dormer style roof attic space – the rear roof is an unconventional skillion roof. The design included the remodelling of the existing house to make it into a contemporary home for a family of four. This included extensive landscaping, a double garage, swimming pool, fencing and outdoor entertainment areas and a complete redesign of the interior to allow for larger bedrooms, additional bathrooms and improved living, kitchen, laundry and guest areas.

The family had lived in the house for four years prior to the proposed renovation and had developed patterns of inhabitation and use. We sought to map the existing human patterns as a tool in understanding the inter-relationship between the existing architecture and its users. As we started to add new design elements into the existing house we continued to evolve the mapping diagram to show a superimposition between existing patterns and new patterns of use. We continued this diagrammatic approach of developing new programmes and mapping existing and proposed movement patterns until we started to conceive of the diagram as a series of straps that guided people through the spaces. Initially these straps were single curved planes constructed by extruding the paths of movement found in the diagrams into NURB based vertical surfaces. We doubled these surfaces which allowed us to bifurcated, bend, join and split them – thus allowing programmes of varying sizes to emerge in the spaces left between these straps. For example, a 600mm space between the straps created the cupboards, a 100mm space created the walls and a 3000mm space created a room. These straps where explored three dimensionally using animation software. We sought to create dynamic movement by wrapping the stairwell with a new strap.

Location: Hawthorn East
Type: Residential Additions and Alterations
Size: 250 sq m
Status: Unbuilt Design
Design: WSH
Design Team: Steve Hatzellis