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The project begins with a 1980’s home-builder house fronting on lake austin. The original design did not harness views to the lake and Mount Bonnell, nor did it respect the ecological sensitivity of its site. The challenge was to develop a sensitive and inventive result out of a pre-existing condition. Through the use of glass, steel, detailing and light the home has been adaptively reinvented. Reflection, translucency, color and geometry conspire to bring natural light deep into the house. A new solarium, pool, and vegetative roof are tuned to interact with the natural context. Exterior materials and refined detailing of the roof structure give the volume clean lines and a bold presence, while abstracting the form of the original dormers and gable roof. Further connecting the home to its site, the roof begins to dissolve where a glass clad chimney and slatted wood screen stand in relief against the sky.
Bercy Chen Studio LP
Selected for 2010 AIA Homes Tour
Regular periods of sleep are key to a healthy body and a clear mind as it is during sleep that your body renews itself.
When life gets busy, sleep is often the first activity we sacrifice. Considered a luxury by many busy people, sleep is actually as vital to sustaining a balanced life as are breathing, eating, and drinking. Getting sufficient sleep can be a potent energizer, just as not getting enough sleep can leave you feeling drained and sluggish. While eight hours is the average amount of sleep for which most adults should generally aim, the right amount of sleep varies upon the individual. Some people may thrive on just four hours, while others don’t feel well rested unless they’ve slept for ten hours. How much we sleep also varies, depending upon where we are in life. Young people often need more sleep, while Elders may need less. However, the benefits of sleep always stay the same. Regular & consistent periods of wakefulness / sleep are key ingredients to fostering a healthy body & a clear mind. After all, it’s during sleep that your body renews itself.
The ability to forgo sleep is considered by some to be an asset. But, while it may seem the nighttime hours can be better used for more productive activities, sleep in itself is extremely productive. During sleep, your body & psyche are both regaining their strength for the coming day. You may even have the unique opportunity to explore the hidden recesses of your personality while you dream. Meanwhile, your long-term memories are reinforced.
Many cultures engage in an afternoon siesta. Taking a nap is refreshing & can increase both productivity and creativity. Author Lewis Carroll is said to have conceived his idea for Alice in Wonderland while dreaming. A good night’s sleep also has been known to bring with it the gifts of clarity, wisdom, and a fresh perspective. Even the ancient Greeks thought of sleep as a gift from the gods. Giving yourself the gift of peaceful slumber, you’ll likely find yourself feeling alert, refreshed & ready for life’s challenges. You may also find yourself feeling more centered, thoughtful, and aware throughout the day so you can live your full potential. No matter what your ongoing complications may be, try and take time to mend yourself this weekend.
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Whereas by the 1930s the idea of official guides and handbooks for individual local authorities, such as urban districts and county boroughs, were well established less common arr County guides; these only really come into prominence in post-WW2 years. However, some do turn up including this c.1936 Handbook for the County of Middlesex, the county to the north and west of London that has now vanished into Greater London. Issued by that doyen of guides and handbooks, E.J. Burrow, it was a consideration of the "industrial, commercial, holiday and sporting aspects of the County". At the time Middlesex, until the early Twentieth Century still a largely rural county, was rapidly vanishing under London's suburban growth. Driven by railway, and later road, expansion this was truly the county of "Metroland", suburban expansion that saw the rapid growth of once small country towns and villages into new suburbs, in this case aided by the Metropolitan Railway that became part of the new London Transport in 1933. In fact, London Transport's predecessors, the old 'Electric Tube' Group had also been busy extending lines into the county both north, to areas such as Southgate and Arnos Grove, as well as west towards Uxbridge, Ruislip and Ealing. This can be seen on the small scale map included in the handbook.
The handbook looks at the usual amenities, residential and commercial, that were provided by the various local authorities and the County Council and by whose "approval" the Handbook was issued. It also details industrial development and it is worth recalling that the County was in many ways quite industrialised; not just a dormatory county for London. Many were the new 'light' industries, such as electrical, and that grew rapidly in the '20s onwards in 'newer' areas rather than older industrial areas. The Handbook contains chapters on various topics, on the local towns and authorities. It also has a great many adverts for house builders and estate developers, each arguing the benefits of their construction and locations. Many give prices and are an indication of the wave of construction, suburbanisation and commuting that Middlesex saw at the time.
A.B. Reast was building modern homes, of distinctive designs, where work was less and much easier, in the north of Hampstead Garden Suburb where his address was 43 Midholm, N.W.11, telephone SPEedwell 7544.
RIVERVIEW GARDENS IS A SERIES OF 3 IDENTICAL HOUSES LOCATED IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, ONE BLOCK NORTH OF LAKE AUSTIN (NOW LADY BIRD LAKE). THE HOMES WERE INSPIRED BY HAMILTON POOL, A DEEP NATURAL ESCARPMENT WHICH FORMS A DRAMATIC WATERFALL NEAR AUSTIN. IN THE SPIRIT OF THAT WATERFALL, RAINWATER IS DIRECTED TO THE END OF EACH RIVERVIEW GARDEN HOUSE AND FALLS 3 STORIES IN A SHEET TO FORM A DRAMATIC WATERFALL, NOT UNLIKE THE RARIN SCREEN FOUND IN CLASSICAL CHINESE GARDENS. THE RAINWATER IS THEN COLLECTED IN AN 80’ LONG SHARED POND WHICH ON A BREEZY DAY PROVIDES SOME NATURAL COOLING TO THE HOUSES.
EACH UNIT CONTAINS 2000 SQUARE FEET OF CONDITIONED SPACE AND AN EQUIVALENT AMOUNT OF OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE. THE UNITS ARE RAISED OFF THE GROUND TO PROVIDE COVERED PARKING AND A RECREATION AREA BELOW WHILE CAPITALIZING ON VIEWS OF THE LAKE ABOVE THE TREE LINE.
EACH HOUSE’S PLAN IS STRETCHED ON AXIS TOWARD THE RIVER TO FRAME THE PRIMARY VIEW WHILE CREATING SEMI-PRIVATE YARDS BETWEEN THE HOUSES. SPATIAL ORGANIZATION IS DRIVEN BY THE VIEW OF THE LAKE. A SERIES OF GLASS AND VEGETATIVE SCREENS DIVIDE THE PRIMARY SPACES ON EACH FLOOR, EACH CREATING A FILTER BETWEEN THE PUBLIC SPACE FACING THE LAKE AND THE PRIVATE SPACE ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE. AS ONE MOVES FROM PUBLIC SPACE TO PRIVATE, THE VIEW OF THE LAKE IS GRADUALLY OBSTRUCTED, RETAINING THE PLAN'S ORGANIZATIONAL FOCUS WHILE ALLOWING INCREASING AMOUNTS OF PRIVACY.
THE HOUSES ARE MONOLITHIC ON THE EAST/WEST AXIS AND COMPLETELY OPEN WITH GLASS ON THE NORTH/SOUTH AXIS ALLOWING UNINTERRUPTED VIEWS TO THE LAKE. THE MINIMIZED FOOTPRINT ENSURES LARGE SHARED YARDS WITH DRAMATIC 40' TALL BRAZILLIAN HARDWOOD WALLS. A CACTUS WALL, LIKE PAINTER DIEGO RIVERA’S LEGENDARY MEXICO CITY STUDIO FENCE, WILL FRAME THE LOTS AT STREET LEVEL.
SPATIAL PARTITIONS ALONG EACH BUILDING'S AXIS ARE ENTIRELY GLASS TO ALLOW SHARED VIEWS. A CENTRAL COURTYARD SERVES AS PART OF THE CIRCULATION. THE COURTYARD IS FRAMED BY CLEAR GLASS WALLS ALLOWING UNINTERRUPTED VIEWS THROUGH THE INTERIOR ROOMS AND OUT TO THE LAKE. THE COURTYARD ALLOWS PRIVATE ACCESS TO THE OUTSIDE AND CREATES SEMI-PRIVATE EXTERIOR SPACES.
ALL ROOF SURFACES ARE OCCUPIABLE. THE MAIN ROOF IS DESIGNED AS A PARTIALLY ENCLOSED “ROOM” WITH TALL TRANSULENT PANELS ENSURING PRIVACY, FRAMING VIEWS, AND REFLECTING THE LIGHT OF THE SKY.
WORKING AS BOTH THE DESIGNER AND BUILDER GIVES THE BERCY CHEN STUDIO OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALIZE INNOVATIVE SYSTEMS AND DETAILS. A DESIGN PARTNERSHIP WITH STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS ENABLED EVEN THESE RELATIVELY SMALL HOMES TO EXHIBIT SOME STRUCTURAL FETES. LIKE AN INVERTED TOWER OF PISA, THE TOP MOST VOLUME OF THE HOUSE CANTILEVERS OVER THE MIDDLE VOLUME, WHICH CANITLEVERS OVER THE BASE. THE RESULTING FORM REACHES OUT TOWARD THE LAKE AND PROVIDES AMPLE SHADING FOR EACH LEVEL.
EVER STRIVING FOR DRAMA, MINIMALISM, ECONOMY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY, THE STUDIO TESTED VARIOUS STRATEGIES FOR MAKING THE TRANSLUCENT EXTERIOR WALL PANEL SYSTEM AS INSULATIVE AS POSSIBLE. ULTIMATELY A COMBINATION OF POLICARB PANELS, ENAMELED WOOD STUDS, AND ORDINARY HOUSEHOLD BUBBLE WRAP ACHIEVED A MINIMUM VALUE OF R-8 FOR ALL EXTERIOR WALLS.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPARENCY IN THE PROJECT DEMANDED CAREFUL CONSIDERATION OF GLAZING DESIGN. BERCY CHEN UTILIZED THE EXPERTISE OF FABRICATORS ON THEIR TEAM TO CUSTOM BUILD ALL WINDOWS AND DOORS, EVEN DOWN TO THE HANDLES AND LATCHES.
Riverview Garden Residence,
Bercy Chen Studio LP
The Concourse luxury homes by Sunland. Located at Royal Pines Golf Resort, Gold Coast, QLD. Photography by Peter Sexty.
View more at The Concourse | Sunland Group
Painted in crisp grey, "Trelawne" is a stylish Streamline Moderne Art Deco mansion that may be found nestled amid a well establish garden of exotics on the corner of Drummond and Webster Streets in the provincial Victorian city of Ballarat.
The flat roof of "Trelawne", the rounded wall treatment, the use of porthole windows and glass brick windows and the minimal decoration across the building all pay homage to the chic, uncluttered lines of Streamline Moderne Art Deco architecture popular around the world in the 1930s.
"Trelawne" has been designed in Modern Ship Style, as Streamline Moderne was known in Australia in the 1930s. This nickname was used because the buildings designed in this style often looked very much like the cascading upper superstructures of ocean liners with their towering decks, railings and porthole windows. The enclosed stairwell of "Trelawne", with its rounded facade, porthole window and banks of glass bricks does not look unlike the prow of a ship. Built in 1930 for manufacturing magnate Herbert John Tippett, "Trelawne" was designed by Herbert Leslie Coburn for the Ballarat architect firm Richards, Coburn and Richards, and is not unlike Harry Norris's Sherbrooke Forest mansion "Burnham Beeches" which he built for millionaire Alfred Nicholas just three years later in 1933. The fence that surrounds the large corner block upon which "Trelawne" is situated is made of bluestone blocks from an earlier house that originally stood on the site.
Ballarat born Herbert Leslie Coburn grew up to be a renowned Ballarat architect, practicing from 1905 to 1956. He taught Architecture and Building Construction at the Ballarat School of Mines from 1922, resigning in 1948 due to ill health. The Royal Victorian Institute of Architects awarded Herbert Coburn a Silver Medal for the designs of an Anglican Gothic Suburban Church in 1913 while he was still a student of the institute. In 1917 Herbert became associated with Percy Richards, and they formed a partnership in 1918, Richards, Coburn, Richards, which lasted until 1933, when they separated owing to artistic differences. Whilst Percy Richards wished to retain a more traditional style in keeping with the popular conservative tastes of their clients, Herbert Coburn wanted to be at the vanguard of architectural design and was very interested in following the sleeker and stylised designs of the Streamline Moderne movement which was coming out of Europe. Herbert Coburn therefore started his own architectural practice. Coburn studied for formal qualifications by correspondence with the International Correspondence School, obtaining an architectural diploma two years later. His rooms were in the Clyde Chambers at 313 Sturt St, Ballarat. He was a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects. Some of Herbert Coburn's architectural achievements include: St Patrick's Primary School in Drummond Street Ballarat (1935), the Shire of Wimmera Council Offices in Firebrace Street Horsham (1936), Paterson's Furniture Store in Horsham (circa 1936), the Railway Hotel in Maryborough (1938) and the clock tower of the Stawell Town Hall (1939). In addition to these, there are many beautiful, well designed and executed modernist Art Deco villas around Ballarat that bear his distinct architectural style.
Hebert John Tippett was born in 1872 at Newlyn, Victoria. He was a Newlyn farmer and grazier before making his name as an engineer. He joined Ronaldson and Co., a machinery manufacturing company located in Creswick Road, in 1905. The business manufactured chaff cutters and corn crushers. After Mr. Tippet joined the firm and moved up its ranks, he eventually became the director of the business and it was renamed Ronaldson and Tippett. Under his management, it manufactured internal combustion engines and water cooled engines. During the Second World War the company won major contracts to supply, pumps, filters, diesel engines and gun cradles for the war effort. They also made marine engines that were reportedly very quiet, making them excellent to use behind enemy lines. Mr. Tippett died aged 84 at his beloved Streamline Moderne home "Trelawne" in 1957.
The steel structure of the house is a bolt together series of moment frames that assembled in a few days without a single weld.
This steel system was chosen for two reasons:
1) It dramatically reduced the construction time, minimizing the disturbance of the delicate ecosystem of the deserts flora and fauna
2) Because the steel is precut and pre-drilled for bolting, there is no construction waste versus a wood frame house which wastes a lot of lumber.
3) Steel is the most recycled product in the world. 80% of the steel beams are made from comes recycled scrap metal.
Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.
The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.
The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.
The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.
The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.
The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.
The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.
Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.
Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.
Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.
Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.
Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.
The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.
The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.
The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.
The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.
The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.
The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.
Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.
Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.
Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.
Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.
Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.
The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.
The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.
The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.
The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.
The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.
The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.
Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.
Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.
Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.
Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.
An internal pocket courtyard acts as a light well, open air shower, and 'solar chimney'. Working as a solar chimney the courtyard allows heat to escape up the vertical space, drawing cool air into the house through the oversize sliding glass doors that open up both ends of the house. This kind of passive/non-automated, climate control method gives the home’s occupants an interactive relationship with their microclimate that lessens their dependence on the carbon hungry air conditioning system.
The tree and plants act as ‘natural air scrubbers’, devouring the C02 and other airborne toxins, replacing it with oxygen.
Behind the tree is an open air shower is tied to the grey water recycling system through a drain concealed under smooth beach pebbles.
01_J_1
Jeremy Levine Design
This wonderfully sprawling, sleek and stylised Streamline Moderne Art Deco mansion built in the 1930s may be found in the Western District Victorian country town of Colac.
The mansion, which spreads across the block in single and double storey sections, is made almost entirely of clinker bricks, with glazed feature bricks in darker colours above and beneath the windows and around the enclosed vestibule. It has been designed in Modern Ship Style, as Streamline Moderne was known in Australia in the 1930s. This nickname was used because the buildings designed in this style often looked very much like the cascading upper superstructures of ocean liners with their towering decks, railings and porthole windows. It features a rounded front elevation, not unlike the prow of a ship, with a rounded portico enclosed with a wrought iron grille, which is reached by a set of rounded steps. It also has chimneys designed not unlike ship funnels. The mansion has very functionalist windows, and the upper floor has a rounded “waterfall window” which also gives the building a nautical feeling as it looks like the bridge of a ship. Unfortunately, the central panel has at some stage been broken and the window boarded up. The curved glass used in “waterfall windows” is very expensive to produce and difficult to fit. The complex features an adjoining garage of equally grand proportions, displaying the wealth of the family who had this residence built, accessed via a long driveway edged with clinker bricks. The owners were obviously very keen to have a new and modern house as a status symbol, but as was quite common in conservative 1930s Australia, they couldn’t quite accept the flat roof that many Streamline Moderne houses in England had.
The whole property is surrounded by its original low brick wall which also features a capping of darker glazed peaked bricks to match those of the window ledges. The garden itself is quite large and features an expanse of lawn edged by large garden beds of creepers, ground covers and roses. Some of the garden beds feature dry stone edging, whilst others have brick edging to match the mansion and its fence. There are some well established trees in the garden which have probably been there since the mansion was first built in the 1930s.
Located approximately 150 kilometres to the south-west of Melbourne, past Geelong is the small Western District city of Colac. The area was originally settled by Europeans in 1837 by pastoralist Hugh Murray. A small community sprung up on the southern shore of a large lake amid the volcanic plains. The community was proclaimed a town, Lake Colac, in 1848, named after the lake upon which it perches. The post office opened in 1848 as Lake Colac and was renamed Colac in 1854 when the city changed its name. The township grew over the years, its wealth generated by the booming grazing industries of the large estates of the Western District and the dairy industry that accompanied it. Colac has a long high street shopping precinct, several churches, botanic gardens, a Masonic hall and a smattering of large properties within its boundaries, showing the conspicuous wealth of the city. Today Colac is still a commercial centre for the agricultural district that surrounds it with a population of around 10,000 people. Although not strictly a tourist town, Colac has many beautiful surviving historical buildings or interest, tree lined streets. Colac is known as “the Gateway to the Otways” (a reference to the Otway Ranges and surrounding forest area that is located just to the south of the town).
Cuboid Garden House MOC bathroom.
This house has a number of cuboid bodies linked together by a dark blue tiled hallway hosting a spiral staircase. Large glass windows offer a view of the ground floor and roof garden. Solar panels and home grown vegetables contribute to a sustainable way of living.
Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.
The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.
The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.
The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.
The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.
The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.
The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.
Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.
Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.
Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.
Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.
Calmwater Cliff House is located on a cliff by the beach. Two floors with a terrace on each floor. Downstairs you find a spacious kitchen and dining area, a bathroom and home office. Upstairs you find a music corner with sea view, a bedroom and the main entrance.
As you see it´s a LEGO house and I´ve mainly used the colours black, dark tan, tan and reddish brown.
I wanted to make a modern home - in some way inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and the colours of the 20th century - updated to 21st century lifestyle.
The Milan is beautifully designed 1 Bed, 1 Bath prefabricated container home with high quality inclusions and standard of finish by Nova Deko. For prices and detailed information please visit www.novadeko.com.au/milan
Car port exterior.
Whitebrick Sand House is characterized by straight lines, glass and sandy colours. Placed in desertlike environment, yet close to civilization. Somewhere to relax.
Cuboid Garden House MOC main entrance viewed from the top of the stairs.
This house has a number of cuboid bodies linked together by a dark blue tiled hallway hosting a spiral staircase. Large glass windows offer a view of the ground floor and roof garden. Solar panels and home grown vegetables contribute to a sustainable way of living.
Roof made of black grilles.
Calmwater Cliff House is located on a cliff by the beach. Two floors with a terrace on each floor. Downstairs you find a spacious kitchen and dining area, a bathroom and home office. Upstairs you find a music corner with sea view, a bedroom and the main entrance.
As you see it´s a LEGO house and I´ve mainly used the colours black, dark tan, tan and reddish brown.
I wanted to make a modern home - in some way inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and the colours of the 20th century - updated to 21st century lifestyle.
Calmwater Cliff House is located on a cliff by the beach. Two floors with a terrace on each floor. Downstairs you find a spacious kitchen and dining area, a bathroom and home office. Upstairs you find a music corner with sea view, a bedroom and the main entrance.
As you see it´s a LEGO house and I´ve mainly used the colours black, dark tan, tan and reddish brown.
I wanted to make a modern home - in some way inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and the colours of the 20th century - updated to 21st century lifestyle.
Welcome in! Open entrance to the living room.
Whitebrick Sand House is characterized by straight lines, glass and sandy colours. Placed in desertlike environment, yet close to civilization. Somewhere to relax.
Calmwater Cliff House is located on a cliff by the beach. Two floors with a terrace on each floor. Downstairs you find a spacious kitchen and dining area, a bathroom and home office. Upstairs you find a music corner with sea view, a bedroom and the main entrance.
As you see it´s a LEGO house and I´ve mainly used the colours black, dark tan, tan and reddish brown.
I wanted to make a modern home - in some way inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and the colours of the 20th century - updated to 21st century lifestyle.
This wonderfully sprawling, sleek and stylised Streamline Moderne Art Deco mansion built in the 1930s may be found in the Western District Victorian country town of Colac.
The mansion, which spreads across the block in single and double storey sections, is made almost entirely of clinker bricks, with glazed feature bricks in darker colours above and beneath the windows and around the enclosed vestibule. It has been designed in Modern Ship Style, as Streamline Moderne was known in Australia in the 1930s. This nickname was used because the buildings designed in this style often looked very much like the cascading upper superstructures of ocean liners with their towering decks, railings and porthole windows. It features a rounded front elevation, not unlike the prow of a ship, with a rounded portico enclosed with a wrought iron grille, which is reached by a set of rounded steps. It also has chimneys designed not unlike ship funnels. The mansion has very functionalist windows, and the upper floor has a rounded “waterfall window” which also gives the building a nautical feeling as it looks like the bridge of a ship. Unfortunately, the central panel has at some stage been broken and the window boarded up. The curved glass used in “waterfall windows” is very expensive to produce and difficult to fit. The complex features an adjoining garage of equally grand proportions, displaying the wealth of the family who had this residence built, accessed via a long driveway edged with clinker bricks. The owners were obviously very keen to have a new and modern house as a status symbol, but as was quite common in conservative 1930s Australia, they couldn’t quite accept the flat roof that many Streamline Moderne houses in England had.
The whole property is surrounded by its original low brick wall which also features a capping of darker glazed peaked bricks to match those of the window ledges. The garden itself is quite large and features an expanse of lawn edged by large garden beds of creepers, ground covers and roses. Some of the garden beds feature dry stone edging, whilst others have brick edging to match the mansion and its fence. There are some well established trees in the garden which have probably been there since the mansion was first built in the 1930s.
Located approximately 150 kilometres to the south-west of Melbourne, past Geelong is the small Western District city of Colac. The area was originally settled by Europeans in 1837 by pastoralist Hugh Murray. A small community sprung up on the southern shore of a large lake amid the volcanic plains. The community was proclaimed a town, Lake Colac, in 1848, named after the lake upon which it perches. The post office opened in 1848 as Lake Colac and was renamed Colac in 1854 when the city changed its name. The township grew over the years, its wealth generated by the booming grazing industries of the large estates of the Western District and the dairy industry that accompanied it. Colac has a long high street shopping precinct, several churches, botanic gardens, a Masonic hall and a smattering of large properties within its boundaries, showing the conspicuous wealth of the city. Today Colac is still a commercial centre for the agricultural district that surrounds it with a population of around 10,000 people. Although not strictly a tourist town, Colac has many beautiful surviving historical buildings or interest, tree lined streets. Colac is known as “the Gateway to the Otways” (a reference to the Otway Ranges and surrounding forest area that is located just to the south of the town).
A roof garden provides the household with food and beauty...
This house has a number of cuboid bodies linked together by a dark blue tiled hallway hosting a spiral staircase. Large glass windows offer a view of the ground floor and roof garden. Solar panels and home grown vegetables contribute to a sustainable way of living.
A glimpse of first floor bathroom of Whitebrick Sand House MOC.
Whitebrick Sand House is characterized by straight lines, glass and sandy colours. Placed in desertlike environment, yet close to civilization. Somewhere to relax.
RIVERVIEW GARDENS IS A SERIES OF 3 IDENTICAL HOUSES LOCATED IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, ONE BLOCK NORTH OF LAKE AUSTIN (NOW LADY BIRD LAKE). THE HOMES WERE INSPIRED BY HAMILTON POOL, A DEEP NATURAL ESCARPMENT WHICH FORMS A DRAMATIC WATERFALL NEAR AUSTIN. IN THE SPIRIT OF THAT WATERFALL, RAINWATER IS DIRECTED TO THE END OF EACH RIVERVIEW GARDEN HOUSE AND FALLS 3 STORIES IN A SHEET TO FORM A DRAMATIC WATERFALL, NOT UNLIKE THE RARIN SCREEN FOUND IN CLASSICAL CHINESE GARDENS. THE RAINWATER IS THEN COLLECTED IN AN 80’ LONG SHARED POND WHICH ON A BREEZY DAY PROVIDES SOME NATURAL COOLING TO THE HOUSES.
EACH UNIT CONTAINS 2000 SQUARE FEET OF CONDITIONED SPACE AND AN EQUIVALENT AMOUNT OF OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE. THE UNITS ARE RAISED OFF THE GROUND TO PROVIDE COVERED PARKING AND A RECREATION AREA BELOW WHILE CAPITALIZING ON VIEWS OF THE LAKE ABOVE THE TREE LINE.
EACH HOUSE’S PLAN IS STRETCHED ON AXIS TOWARD THE RIVER TO FRAME THE PRIMARY VIEW WHILE CREATING SEMI-PRIVATE YARDS BETWEEN THE HOUSES. SPATIAL ORGANIZATION IS DRIVEN BY THE VIEW OF THE LAKE. A SERIES OF GLASS AND VEGETATIVE SCREENS DIVIDE THE PRIMARY SPACES ON EACH FLOOR, EACH CREATING A FILTER BETWEEN THE PUBLIC SPACE FACING THE LAKE AND THE PRIVATE SPACE ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE. AS ONE MOVES FROM PUBLIC SPACE TO PRIVATE, THE VIEW OF THE LAKE IS GRADUALLY OBSTRUCTED, RETAINING THE PLAN'S ORGANIZATIONAL FOCUS WHILE ALLOWING INCREASING AMOUNTS OF PRIVACY.
THE HOUSES ARE MONOLITHIC ON THE EAST/WEST AXIS AND COMPLETELY OPEN WITH GLASS ON THE NORTH/SOUTH AXIS ALLOWING UNINTERRUPTED VIEWS TO THE LAKE. THE MINIMIZED FOOTPRINT ENSURES LARGE SHARED YARDS WITH DRAMATIC 40' TALL BRAZILLIAN HARDWOOD WALLS. A CACTUS WALL, LIKE PAINTER DIEGO RIVERA’S LEGENDARY MEXICO CITY STUDIO FENCE, WILL FRAME THE LOTS AT STREET LEVEL.
SPATIAL PARTITIONS ALONG EACH BUILDING'S AXIS ARE ENTIRELY GLASS TO ALLOW SHARED VIEWS. A CENTRAL COURTYARD SERVES AS PART OF THE CIRCULATION. THE COURTYARD IS FRAMED BY CLEAR GLASS WALLS ALLOWING UNINTERRUPTED VIEWS THROUGH THE INTERIOR ROOMS AND OUT TO THE LAKE. THE COURTYARD ALLOWS PRIVATE ACCESS TO THE OUTSIDE AND CREATES SEMI-PRIVATE EXTERIOR SPACES.
ALL ROOF SURFACES ARE OCCUPIABLE. THE MAIN ROOF IS DESIGNED AS A PARTIALLY ENCLOSED “ROOM” WITH TALL TRANSULENT PANELS ENSURING PRIVACY, FRAMING VIEWS, AND REFLECTING THE LIGHT OF THE SKY.
WORKING AS BOTH THE DESIGNER AND BUILDER GIVES THE BERCY CHEN STUDIO OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALIZE INNOVATIVE SYSTEMS AND DETAILS. A DESIGN PARTNERSHIP WITH STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS ENABLED EVEN THESE RELATIVELY SMALL HOMES TO EXHIBIT SOME STRUCTURAL FETES. LIKE AN INVERTED TOWER OF PISA, THE TOP MOST VOLUME OF THE HOUSE CANTILEVERS OVER THE MIDDLE VOLUME, WHICH CANITLEVERS OVER THE BASE. THE RESULTING FORM REACHES OUT TOWARD THE LAKE AND PROVIDES AMPLE SHADING FOR EACH LEVEL.
EVER STRIVING FOR DRAMA, MINIMALISM, ECONOMY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY, THE STUDIO TESTED VARIOUS STRATEGIES FOR MAKING THE TRANSLUCENT EXTERIOR WALL PANEL SYSTEM AS INSULATIVE AS POSSIBLE. ULTIMATELY A COMBINATION OF POLICARB PANELS, ENAMELED WOOD STUDS, AND ORDINARY HOUSEHOLD BUBBLE WRAP ACHIEVED A MINIMUM VALUE OF R-8 FOR ALL EXTERIOR WALLS.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPARENCY IN THE PROJECT DEMANDED CAREFUL CONSIDERATION OF GLAZING DESIGN. BERCY CHEN UTILIZED THE EXPERTISE OF FABRICATORS ON THEIR TEAM TO CUSTOM BUILD ALL WINDOWS AND DOORS, EVEN DOWN TO THE HANDLES AND LATCHES.
Riverview Garden Residence,
Bercy Chen Studio LP
This is a new modern duplex house on Chandler Avenue in Victoria, BC, Canada.
The home was designed by the owner, architect Andrew Beckerman. He lives in one side of the duplex, and rents out the other side.
The sink, vanity, and shower are made of 50%recycled fly ash and 50% concrete with red pigement.
The interior walls are smooth stucco to match the adjacent pocket courtyard which contains the outdoor shower that is open to the sky.
Clerestory windows bring light into the bathroom over the white glass windows and sliding doors, while also providing a view of the courtyard tree.
01_M_2
House plan of Cuboid Garden House.
This house has a number of cuboid bodies linked together by a dark blue tiled hallway hosting a spiral staircase. Large glass windows offer a view of the ground floor and roof garden. Solar panels and home grown vegetables contribute to a sustainable way of living.
Peek through the window of Calmwater Cliff House MOC. Open plan with dining area and kitchen.
Calmwater Cliff House is located on a cliff by the beach. Two floors with a terrace on each floor. Downstairs you find a spacious kitchen and dining area, a bathroom and home office. Upstairs you find a music corner with sea view, a bedroom and the main entrance.
As you see it´s a LEGO house and I´ve mainly used the colours black, dark tan, tan and reddish brown.
I wanted to make a modern home - in some way inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and the colours of the 20th century - updated to 21st century lifestyle.