Triptych comprises 3 major works in one location. The Main House, or Blunt House, The Pulmonum, and The Glass House. Each work responds to its specific location and its relationship to the whole architectural choreography.

At the Main House Room 11’s intuitive response to place was to look towards the expanse of Norfolk Bay.

Once this desire had been established, the design was driven to achieve this goal. The service spaces became delightful idiosyncratic, light-hearted juxtaposition to this stern and sincere Architectural gesture. The experience of entering is to be buried and then projected into the landscape.

The Pulmonum is the second gesture, and fulfils the clients desire for a destination within a vast continuum of landscape. A place to rest the eyes when the astonishing beauty of the greater view is too much to comprehend. The experience of the Pulmonum upon approach appears to be one of simple, formal definition, but upon entering, the sky above is reflected in the pool below. You are brought back to your body.

The Glass House is the third piece of the Triptych. A retreat for short term, elated occupancy. A reprieve. Lighting fire, cutting bread, and eating fresh food become ceremony.

This project illustrates that Architects and the Architectural processes can liberate individuals experience of residences beyond mundane outcomes. Architecture that shows joy,

masterly control, and represents ideological freedom, we believe is of intrinsic value.

The client sees these buildings as an extraordinary manifestation of his desires that transcends his original brief.

TASMANIAN ARCHITECTURE AWARD FOR RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES (NEW)

Jury Citation

“Monumental, heroic and intimate. These three singular, site-specific works heighten and intensify the relationship between occupants and landscape, and establish an almost sacred processional approach between a series of elements and the wider landscape.

The glass pavilion, while seemingly a trope of Modernism, is in fact a highly attenuated essay on room-making in the Tasmanian landscape. The walls of the interior are the trees and bushland. The everyday acts of sleeping, eating, and being are in communion with the shrouding light of these specific forests. The extruded form of the central house sits on an engineered thread of experiential tension with the horizon. The sectional entry sequence and pattern of light and shadow elongates the experiential threshold. Immersed in the belly of the earth, the enfilade progressively culminates in a projected experience over the expanse of the valley. Rituals of bathing and sleeping are always inventive, and always experientially considered.

A focus object in this sequence is the encounter with a concrete void. This chamber was conceived as a finite focal point that yields views into the infinite skies above. In the classical tradition of harnessing elements of a broader landscape, this architectural triptych offers a considered proposition to Tasmanian space-making.”

https://www.architecture.com.au/awards/2023-awards/2023-tasmanian-architecture-awards-winners

SHORTLISTED FOR NATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARDS 2023

https://www.architecture.com.au/archives/news_media_articles/2023-national-architecture-awards-shortlist-revealed

PUBLICATION

Featured in The Local Project Issue 12 + Online Publication

https://thelocalproject.com.au/videos/koonya-by-room11-issue-12-feature-the-local-project/

Wallpaper (Online Publication)

https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/koonya-triptych-tasmania-house-room-eleven-australia

Room11’s Architecture is preoccupied with a desire to propagate connections with place.

The experience of the coastal landscape on the site is one of layers; water, sand flat, grasses, tea tree and finally Coastal Eucalyptus forest. The buildings are placed as additional layers, they are transparent where needed and solid when required for refuge.

There is a strong vernacular tradition in the area. Often, the gravel road boundary is fenced, and the shack is placed towards the water. Between these two elements a wind protected lawn is established for family recreation. At the Wild house this pattern is established in a less spatially abrupt manner. Native vegetation is maintained in lieu of lawn. In this way the home affirms cultural norms while politely extending sensitivity and connection to place.

TASMANIAN ARCHITECTURE AWARD FOR RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES (NEW)

Jury Citation

“This project continues and elevates the tradition of economical form-making on open Tasmanian sites. Enmeshed in riparian woodland, two linear elements define a generous courtyard. One element is raw, a surrogate pavilion giving protection from the street, operating as storage, working, guest accommodation and ‘outdoor room’. 

Enclosing this ensemble, the primary residential pavilion provides a lee from the persistent westerlies and directs shared spaces toward the bush setting, with glimpsed estuary views. Bedrooms and bathrooms hang off an extruded piece of joinery where books, objects and collections are deftly arranged in a personal linear gallery. This act of personal ‘display’ shuts out the wild weather and views so that moments of engagement with the surrounds are choreographed, clear and calm. 

Reminiscent of two lines in the sand, the built forms are both elemental and practical. External detailing softens and structures interiors by utilising external timber screens, which can be manoeuvred to manage views, light and privacy. A sliding wall surprisingly dissolves the entire interior and redefines a central camp kitchen and the communal potential of the courtyard. Wild House clearly proposes an alternative way of living, one that celebrates the elemental nature of familial togetherness.“

https://www.architecture.com.au/awards/2023-awards/2023-tasmanian-architecture-awards-winners

As the name implies, this house is a celebration of a particular climate: the glorious deluge of rainfall that one of the cleanest places on the planet can be subject.

As the courtyard becomes the catalyst for the overall design, it is also a place in which the residents can find solace, and a space where the outside and the inside co-exist in harmony. Designed to edit out the view of immediate neighbouring houses, this space engenders a monastic feel to the home.

“Seen from afar, the pavilion reads as two parallel lines set against the gently undulating landscape. It is a defined architectural object that makes no pretensions to naturalness – but its every design gesture is imminently decipherable and logical, grounded in and given meaning by the experience it seeks to create. It does not take on the form of a glass pavilion simply to play with creating one of architecture’s most daring typologies, nor adopt minimalism as a purely aesthetic sensibility. The Glass House lays itself bare to the landscape because it is the most straightforward route to achieving an authentic, inimitable experience of place.”

More to come…

Replete with devastating panoramas, Apollo Bay, on Bruny Island finds itself nonetheless exposed.

Winds buffet the angled terrain and so we devised a high walled courtyard to protect the inner workings of this home.

The house employs an inflected non-orthogonal plan where massive stone walls encompass living spaces which are enriched by the resultant spatial complexity.

A black interior has been created which provides relief from the blisteringly bright Tasmanian light.

D’entrecasteaux House has a simple pallet, dark within and a pale stone exterior.

Face-fixed bespoke glazing focuses attention upon very specific elements within the overwhelming landscape continuum.

The Little Big House is located upon the eastern slopes of Mount Wellington, high above Hobart. The siting is mindful of its context; positioned close to and perpendicular to the curvilinear Huon Road. The house, on a vacant lot between established houses and gardens, is defensive and diagrammatic. Tucked carefully between cadastral constraints and a magnificent birch tree, the footprint has been kept deliberately small. The dwelling is stacked across two levels which step to match the undulating terrain.It’s just a box. A clean volume with two exceptions; a service core and an entry air-lock.The house is designed to be intensely private. Apertures are purposefully positioned to create pure window types opening to either garden, sky or shadow. Polycarbonate cladding on the eastern and western facades render luminous shadow walls which enable the house to be concurrently light and contained.

It has been previously noted that Hobart is a small city in a large landscape. This beauteous mountainous isle is justly renowned. But the most southern capital city in Australia is nonetheless beset by the perennial problem of an ever-expanding edge.
New homes in new suburbs are being built up and down the river further entrenching car-dependency. The lighthouse by room11 architects is a carefully considered consolidation project which demonstrates the potential for beautiful bespoke building which offer an alternative to the unchecked suburban hemorrhage.
The client came to our office with a proposal to deliberately downsize. Selling a large family house to finance construction, they wanted a smaller simpler inner-city home. A double lot owned by a family member was identified as a suitable site. In an older area with a convivial community and suitable services the lot was within walking distance everything. An existing single storey house on the property built to address the street was to remain. As one of the last unbuilt spaces, the site was indeed constrained with reactive soils and surrounded by heritage buildings.

All these things led logically to the adoption of a courtyard arrangement. A perimeter strategy of high walls defines a rectangle within which the house is positioned. A generous courtyard to the north offers space for outdoor living whilst a smaller court to the south hosts a productive garden.
An elegantly spare kitchen sits on the short wall of the living room. To the northern edge, sliding glass screens open, enabling the the space as experienced to extend up and over screening courtyard walls to the forested ridge which rises beyond.
The home is passively heated and ventilated with openings and orientation sensibly deployed. A free-standing wood fire provides winter warming and a ceremonial hearth. Bedrooms and bathroom are organised perpendicularly to the main space. Skylit and intensely private, these rooms are modest in scale and furnishings.

The house has a subdued vocabulary with pale cement sheet cladding, white gravel and unpainted cement block walls. Timber window reveals and wooden doors are meticulously detailed. Those parts of the house which are touched offer a rich haptic experience. The crunch of gravel and the texture and scent of timber enliven the formal simplicity of the architecture.
A vegetable garden has been established in the space between the existing heritage house and the new dwelling. Like a carefully kept secret the home is virtually unknowable from the street. The scale and tactics of the building are polite and respectful to neighbours.
Our office is a short walk from the Lighthouse and we often see our client out walking in the late afternoon sun. With a smile on her face she tells us that her house makes her happy every day. This in turn makes us extremely glad.

More coming soon!