Using local materials to embed modern architectural lines in a rural context, studio James Stockwell Architects designed a contemporary home known as “Croft” in Victoria, Australia. With a core concept that embodies the potential of the land into a sheltered geometrical play of lines, the residence located along the South coast of Victoria near Inverloch was designed to both expose its inhabitants to coastal views and to shelter them within the interior spaces.
Tapered facades showcase the influence of contemporary architecture on the need to compose an interior honoring the owner’s request for a home that “may contain all the necessary activities of domestic life in an uncompromised way but that the activities are enhanced by participating in the whole and each yields to the other to a much greater extent.”
This futuristic interpretation was built using local craftsmanship and materials, making it unique and unobtrusive. Grey metal and concrete for the structure, interior structure and joinery of Vic ash timber and wet areas in bluestone – a palette in perfect harmony with the client’s wishes. And all Victorian supplied.
The architects describe the concept and process behind the design of this intriguing architectural fantasy: “The design process adopts the 1950ʼs modernist philosophy of ʻplastic integrityʼ as well as the concept of architecture as a field of energies and flows. The form of the house distorts mathematical and structural curves to achieve the interior purpose. The adopted geometry and composition of three sine curves means details are achievable with 2 dimensional radii. Both concave and convex roof surfaces are 2 dimensional planes and constructed from conventional battens and rafters and corrugated metal. Softwood scissor trusses were erected in 2 days on ʻin planʼ arch ring beams of laminated timber braced by the remnant buttresses. Laminated timber beams most aptly suited the formation of the sine curve form of the building courtyard shape, the natural curve of material ductility.”
