Adelaide Hills House, South Australia home design, Australian modern architecture images

Adelaide Hills House in South Australia

12 October 2024

Architects: Atelier Bond

Location: Adelaide Hills, Adelaide, South Australia

Photos: David Sievers

Adelaide Hills House – South Australia Property

The house was conceived for the family’s future generations to enjoy – almost like a legacy. The clients, long-time city dwellers, found the one – the block of land that fitted the brief. And this was to be the client’s forever home. We were asked to create something worthy of the site. It’s a site that sits pretty in amongst the Adelaide Hills. From this brief, Atelier Bond created a composition of spaces that, at its core, gives an open invitation to enjoy everything there is to enjoy about an Adelaide Hills home.

Orientated to the North but favouring the east, the 65-metre building is long and wide. Internally, its ceilings complement the scale with a six-metre-high rammed earth wall and four-metre internal ceiling height. Atelier Bond created 1200 sqm metres (400 of those in the basement level). The house is essentially split into a guest wing so family members can stay at their leisure, all with ensuites and amenities. Whilst on the southeast side, the homeowners can enjoy their peaceful retreats of the library, sewing room, bedroom, bathrooms, and dressing rooms.

In the middle of these two wings is the central hub of the house – kitchen, living, and dining. This is the heart of the house. An expansive space, divided by a substantial fireplace, runs parallel 12 metres, with an operable and openable window suite. The mix of brick and baton-angled ceilings ties your eyes to the interior, and as you glance at the outside view, your gaze fixes on the dam below. Whichever room you find yourself in, one beautiful thing about this place is that nothing can interrupt the view.

The rammed earth spine- the structural hero piece of this house, has a continual presence throughout. It benefits in thermal mass, temperature control, and, of course, strength and durability. Its fireproofing quality was also an undeniable option for the risky hill’s summers. An engineering feat of cantilevering 4 metres at each end of the spine proudly completes the form. Atelier Bond’s other design feat for this space is the angled ceiling detail. It seeks to capture the best of the view and the light by angling the roof life to the east through a specialized timber system.

Our client also aspired to much more than a home that fits an Adelaide Hills lifestyle. As an engineer, he was interested in what drives the function of the building, too. This directed a much more complex consideration of how the building interacted with the surrounding environment and its relationship with it. Underfloor heating for the 800 sqm of the top concrete floor plate ensures consistent heating control. Ventilated fresh air supplies for the bathrooms, intelligent controls, and automation throughout the property are a control centre in itself. The water supply boasts underground cables and heat pumps directly from the dam below to resolve the functional brief.

It is challenging to create a home so large in scale without feeling cavernous. Through careful functional resolutions and material selections, it’s a large and beautiful home that nestles into the site more quietly than you would think.