This home is a celebration of timber in all of its forms, with rooms that open and close in dialogue with the landscape.

The clients, a professional family of three, requested a flexible home with open spaces that would allow them to entertain guests, as well as adapt to their changing needs.

However, the home’s relationship with its environment is perhaps the most important element of its design.

“The simple massing composed of simple materials focuses the viewer's attention onto the relationship of the house to its environment,” says architect Andrew Walter.

“The house at specific points, opens up to create moments of porosity for landscapes to inhabit. At each of these openings different landscape conditions can be found that are unique responses to the orientation of each courtyard embracing the specific qualities of light, air and the proportion of space.

“These landscapes have an influence on the adjacent interior space. Interior spaces expand or contract in dialogue with the landscape harmoniously with functional needs. The interior spaces are open, light filled and are detailed to limit distraction.”

Silver top ash is used throughout the home, rough sawn on the exterior and given a softer, smoother finish in the interior spaces. The timber also graduates from almost black on the exterior to shades of light to medium brown and light yellow in the interior, signifying the transition from pure nature in all of its rugged beauty to a more comfortable, enclosed space to appreciate the surrounding landscape. Of course, much like the leaves of a tree, the timber cladding will lighten up and change colour over time.

“Materiality is a detail often oversimplified or over complicated,” says Walter.

“A rough sawn timber used for the exterior reveals a native material quality often erased during manufacturing. This rough and protective boundary embraces the natural variation of the material.

“Moving through the house the material texture changes and volumes open up and collides with landscaped spaces that punctuate the plan. Opacity makes way for transparency, and privacy for openness and inclusion.”

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