Image Credit : Tom Ferguson Photography
(https://www.tomferguson.com.au/)
Project Overview
Life on the edge! Sitting atop a 6m high cliff, Perch House provides our clients with a new home tailored to their specific needs, as they downsize from a larger, more traditional home, to a contemporary dwelling that has been designed to carefully balance the technical, social and aesthetic considerations presented by it’s dramatic location.
The new home mediates between two conditions; the wildness of an escarpment to its immediate north; and the ‘garden suburb’ in which it sits. It seeks to provide a singular, legible language that responds to these differing contexts, simultaneously offering privacy and shelter where appropriate, whilst elsewhere taking full advantage of the spectacular site, to enjoy stunning views out over the adjacent escarpment and to Sydney’s Middle Harbour beyond.
The brief posed a number of contradictions that had to be considered and reconciled. The home was to take full advantage of the site’s patent potential, whilst remaining respectful to both the suburb and adjacent bushland. The clients were seeking a house that was open and engaged with it’s context, yet privacy was a key requirement. A bold and innovative approach was sought, yet also a degree of discretion. And the home was to allow for aging-in-place, but on a site with dramatic stepped topography.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
pH+ Architects - Architecture + Interiors
Structure Consulting Engineers - Structure
Newmark Constructions - Contractor
Tom Ferguson - Photography
Space – Furniture
Project Brief
In response to both the context and brief, primary accommodation within the home is elevated to capture expansive water views north, whilst being accessed on grade from the street. Views captured are framed by a generous external terrace that cantilevers out over the sandstone cliff below, extending the main living spaces out towards the breath-taking exterior of the escarpment.
In contrast, the relationship to the neighbourhood is more introverted. A series of ramps between floors (and roof), provide step free access and define a buffer zone between house and street, incorporating greenery of a more controlled nature, referencing the suburban context.
A floating, semi-permeable, corten screen veils this external space towards the street, with each metal fin carefully configured to strike an appropriate balance between privacy for residents and engagement with the public domain. The screen continues to envelop the sides of the new home, only breaking to frame the dramatic view north, providing both a legible and logical response to the site.
With the ramps leading up to a roof terrace opening to the sky above, the design sets up a series of new relationships between interior and exterior, ensuring that no matter where residents are, they will have a varied, yet direct relationship to the dramatic location.
Project Innovation/Need
The site is located in Castlecrag, a residential suburb located on Sydney’s Lower North Shore.
It was designed by Walter Burley Griffin (and his wife Marion Mahoney Griffin) who previously oversaw the design of the nation’s new capital, Canberra. Castlecrag was designed as a ‘model residential suburb’ that sought to respect the natural landscape, replacing the unsympathetic ‘grid plan’, with streets that follow the topography of the land, retaining key features and providing residents with views of the landscape. Perch House was designed to meet rigorous planning controls that rightly seek to protect and enhance this legacy, in doing so illustrating how contemporary design can be both respectful to it’s physical and social context, whilst reinterpreting and progressing design thinking.
In addition, one of the sites main assets, it’s close proximity to the adjacent escarpment, meant the site itself is designated as Bushfire prone land. This brought with it a raft of additional requirements in terms of construction methods, that posed further challenges. The Perch House illustrates how an architecture that seeks to frame, celebrate and open to the landscape, can be balanced with even the most demanding BAL-FZ Bushfire Rating requirements.
Design Challenge
The design and materiality of the new home is directly driven by its location, sitting immediately adjacent to bushfire prone land. A palette of sandstone (referencing the local landscape), concrete, terrazzo and corten steel is adopted to achieve a BAL-FZ rating, along with considered detailing to conceal bushfire shutters throughout. The same materials continue within the home, further blurring definitions of inside and out, but here they convey key datums underpinning the design.
The elevated upper floor adopts a lighter palette reflecting the more extroverted communal spaces, as they extend outwards and up. Roof pop-ups over primary living spaces provide internal ceiling heights of 4.2m, with clerestory glazing that brings daylight and the diurnal cycle deep into the home. These work in conjunction with floor to ceiling glazing that retracts fully, either into pockets or beyond the building itself, ensuring ample daylight and natural cross ventilation.
Below, the grounded lower level also offers connection to the outdoors, but here spaces are more introverted. A darker palette is adopted with materials conveying a sense of mass, as they frame and focus attention to more immediate greenery within the site.
Perch House carefully balances porosity with protection, allowing our clients to engage fully with the special location, enjoying all the benefits living in a temperate climate, whilst offering a robust response to the demands of the site and an elegant home for them to enjoy for years to come.
Sustainability
The home adopts a number of principles of environmentally sustainable design. It’s north facing orientation ensures optimum passive solar gain. This is supplemented by the roof pop-ups with clerestory glazing, that further ensure good daylight levels within the home and throughout the day. The design directly conveys strategic shading that has been developed to shield the home from harsh summer sun, whilst allowing solar ingress during winter months. Large sections of fully retractable glazing ensure ample natural cross ventilation, capturing the prevalent winds. And whilst the home opens to the north and south, glazing to the east and west is deliberately limited and screened. Further ESD principles incorporated into the design include:
Thermal mass of the concrete structure
Strategically located insulation
EV-charging point
Solar electricity generation (PV)
On-site Battery Storage
High-efficiency centralised hot water
Pumped hot-water loops
WELS rated fixtures and fittings
Natural light and ventilation to all habitable rooms
Natural light and ventilation to all common areas
Low VOC paints, adhesives, sealants and floor coverings
Durable, zero maintenance façades
Provisions to manage recyclables and waste from the site
Green roof, retains and reduces water run off
15,000 litre rainwater retention tank for toilet flushing and landscape irrigation
Extensive planting and green roof reducing the urban heat effect.
Architecture - Residential - Constructed
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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