Our brief was to design a swimming pool and provide on-site parking on a large sloping suburban site – our first recommendation was to restrict any construction to the site’s periphery to protect its greatest asset – a beautiful established garden in the centre of the site.
To protect the site’s beautiful terraced garden while solving the problem of a lack of on-site parking, we proposed a two storey floating pavilion with a tree structure that minimised the point of contact between the building structure and the landscape below.
For the lower level beneath the parking, we were inspired by the compactness of more miniaturised functional spaces, such as boats and caravans, to shape our design for the interior. We worked with both physically tight spaces and the idea of each element having a range of functions – kitchen bench and study desk, window seat and bed and storage.