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Gooseberry Hill Residence, Western Australia

Rural Australian Home: Perth House design by Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects

2 Sep 2009

Location: suburb of Perth

Design: Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects

Rural Australian Property

Photos © Shannon McGrath

Gooseberry Hill house

Gooseberry Hill house explores the potential for formal, material and spatial connections to the existing landscape at both a macro and micro level.

The concern of Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects with extracting the maximum potential of place results in a multiplicity of experience; living under the house, bathing in the floor, suspended on the edge of the site, window seats capturing the theatre of the natural view contrasted with the home theatre experience, strategically placed windows framing alternative fragments of distant views and abstracting nature (green polycarbonate wall).

We attempted to capture the experience of a walk in the native West Australian bush.

This continues Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects exploration in to dualities or the Jekyll and Hyde possibilities of architecture in relationship to place. One side is embedded in the carved hill whilst the other side by contrast is suspended above the landscape.

This dualism is also reflected in the selection of materials; timber boarding contrasted with green polycarbonate (the organic and the synthetic) and the detailing of the concrete wall, one side is smooth off-form concrete the other is poured against a bed of industrial bubble wrap (the slick and the hairy).

A central under-developed spine existed in the original house, we opened this to the landscape and extended this over the site commencing with the letterbox wall and ending with a focused view in to the landscape.

In a suburb and society that continues to encourage the tabula rasa approach to site and construction this project demonstrates the capacity to effectively and innovatively work with an existing built fabric and minimise the impact to the existing site.

Numerous parts of the existing residence were recycled; old decking now forms a flexible sunscreen necklace that responds to the sun patterns whilst binding the old and the new. The edges of the building are purposely frayed and the detailing intentionally rural.

Gooseberry Hill house Australia images / information from Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects

Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects

Location: Gooseberry Hill, Perth, Western Australia