Great effort went into balancing design and cost in detailing the skillion roofs. They needed to accommodate box gutters with falls, and hefty rafters for some reasonable spans. We tapered them to a fine point to create a feeling of lightness to the space.
Careful setout of the expressed joint soffit lining and ‘beaked’ flashing articulates the cantilevered roof over the balcony.
Masonry walls are used on the ground floor for impact resistance, and rendered foam panel cladding is used on the first floor to reduce weight and cost, and provide excellent thermal insulation to the home.
We carefully detailed the linear rendered elements on the front facade to keep them at 2 consistent widths to create a sense of order in the structure.
The standing seam aluminium sheet cladding was developed in conjunction with a metal fabricator specifically for this project. Our clients loved the look of zinc cladding, but not the price tag. We’d originally intended to use Colorbond for the standing seam, but found it too hard to work and too easy to scratch. The gunmetal coated aluminium sheet, carefully detailed for a crisp finish provided the classy look of zinc within our budget. Our clients liked it so much they took up our suggestion to use it on the garage door!
Our carpentry team took great pride in mitring and matching the Spotted Gum flooring to line the steps from kitchen to living room, creating a cascading effect as the floor plane folds over the stairs.
The central spine steel stair with 3 flights took a great deal of working out to fit neatly in the allotted space, which was always going to be tight. We were determined to make it work beautifully, being a prominent feature of the house. Our carpenters did a lovely job with the Spotted Gum treads.
The large room divider between kitchen and lounge slides into a cavity formed by welding up an SHS frame on site to give stiffness without increasing width.
Steele Associates designed an innovative picture rail to run around the rear living spaces to achieve these benefits:
Pictures are hung by fishing line from a fishing sinker placed within a dovetail groove routed into the base of the picture rail. regularly spaced drill-outs allow sinkers to be inserted and removed as required. Just like a proprietary art-hanging system, but made from Aussie hardwood.
LED strip lighting is recessed into the top of the rail, uplighting the ceiling to give the impression of it lifting away from the room at night. This also allowed us to keep the ceiling plane clean without the ever-present downlights so common these days.
High level glazing is defined by the datum line of the picture rail, which reinforces the human scale of the room and accentuates the effect of the raised skillion roof.
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