Hasta La Ideas

Australian architecture office Iredale Pedersen Hook has renovated a 1930s property in Perth and added an angular rear extension that contrasts with the traditional street-facing facade (+ slideshow).

Architects Adrian Iredale and Caroline Di Costa of Iredale Pedersen Hook own the house and have been gradually conducting renovations over the past four years to adapt it to the changing needs of their young family.

Mindful of preserving the property’s historic aesthetic while updating its functionality, the architects retained the front facade and based the faceted shape of the extension on the multiple sloping surfaces of the original roof.

“Folding forms developed from the existing roof achieve a reinterpretation of the surrounding streetscape and roofscape, binding old and new [as well as] historic and contemporary,” said the architects. “A Jekyll and Hyde quality, the street appearance remains almost untouched; a silent figure, a backdrop, the rear is the extrovert, complex and challenging.”

When viewed from the adjacent street, the house appears to retain the appearance of the Queen Anne Federation-style properties typical in the city’s Vincent district, which feature details reminiscent of the Baroque style of architecture that gained popularity in England during the early eighteenth century.

A key feature of this style is a sheltered verandah next to the entrance, which was popular with the Italian and Greek immigrants who moved to the neighbourhood following the First World War. The architects reintroduced this element to the building to enhance the connection between the house, the garden and the street.

The faceted extension extends upwards and outwards from the existing sloping roof at the rear of the property, which prevents it from being seen from the street.

Folding doors on the ground floor can be pulled back to connect the dining room and kitchen with a terrace that projects into the garden.

Above the terrace, the upper storey leans forward to shield the interior from the low summer sun and to make the most of views across the surrounding rooftops.

The facade of the extension is covered with fabric panels, which allow light to permeate and display shadows from the branches of nearby trees. Some of the panels at eye level can be opened to provide views of the horizon.

A cooling system that drips water down the fabric panels to chill hot air before it reaches the interior was based on the principle of the Coolgardie Safe – a traditional refrigeration technique employed by Western Australian miners to cool food.

The angular interior of the study and living room on the upper floor is entirely clad in plywood panels. The sloping back wall replaces the tiles of the original roof and provides a surface that Iredale and Di Costa’s two-year-old daughter uses as a slide.

As well as the roofline, the architects retained features including the chimney, which has been converted into a water collector, and a 1950s sliding door with an amber glass panel at the top of the stairs.

A multipurpose pavilion constructed in the garden features a pyramidal polycarbonate roof, culminating in a transparent panel that allows daylight to reach the interior and provides views of the sky.

Photography is by Peter Bennetts.

Here’s a project description from Iredale Pedersen Hook:

CASA31_4 Room House

Conceptual Framework

CASA31_4 Room House re-interprets the role of memory, tradition and social and cultural value in a rich spatial experience that is simultaneous familiar yet unfamiliar. Our architecture preserves and reinterprets the past. History is layered but never erased. Fragments of the past continually remind us that we are only another layer in the rich and unfolding history of this place.

All spaces contain elements of the past, often manifest as objects of intrigue, the sloping floor (the former roof), the barge scrolls on the front fence, the roof tiles creating a musical score along the boundary, the chimney as water collector and the up-cycling of former building elements as decks, gates, architraves and furniture.

A front deck engages with the street, re-introducing the role and value of the front garden as social setting and meeting place, a past tradition by the immigrant Italians and Greeks that has almost disappeared in societies obsession with privacy and security.

Over the last 3 years we have explored our 1936 Queen Anne Mount Hawthorn Federation house scraping, layering, and peeling with 4 primary spatial ideas; the room to the interior, the room to the garden, the room to the horizon, the room to the sky.

The room to the interior explores what existed, years of layering, the art of construction, knowing what to keep, what to reveal and what to remove, knowledge gained from 13 years indulging in the past. Rooms become the embodiment of a city, a microcosm of the qualities that make a great city. The room to the garden focuses attention to the exterior at ground level, it is purposely heavy and grounded engaging with the earth, the section expands to the exterior, a series of folding screens layer the engagement.

A space of deep sensory delight, an architectural palette cleanser, transitions the ground and upper level, the eyes and nose are overpowered by the burnt and waxed plywood walls and the amber light cast by Nan’s 1950’s sliding door.

The room to the horizon filters the suburban roof tops, the screen abstracts the exterior world, the interior is one folded space formed through a play on the one point perspective that intensifies the horizon. Openable screens create a direct view framing the horizon, releasing the interior volume. The space is cooled with an interpretation of the old Coolgardie safe, water is dripped down the fabric cooling the outside air. The newly restored, 1956 Iwan Iwanoff Guthrie residence cabinet finds a new home after 15 years of storage in numerous architect’s garages. The roughly painted ‘I love Linda’ remains on the chimney, a rear window frames the distant Saint Mary’s Church.

The room to the sky creates a vertical spatial experience, a halo of love poems embraces us (former wedding installation) and at night a cross of light abstracted by polycarbonate awakens but unlike St Mary’s Church our little spire opens up to the heavens.

Contribution to lives of inhabitants

After 4 years of renovating it is now time to enjoy the richness and intensity of experience that this renovation has created. Every day is a different experience, one that is tender, unexpected, personal and embedded with history. The design enables our children and us to grow and evolve in a sequence of spaces that encourage engagement with each other and the dwelling and offers new ways of understanding and exploring family relationships and an understanding of space. Our house is simultaneous a memorial, playground, place of celebration, stage set, place of community interaction and most importantly ‘home’.

Program Resolution

The design exploits all areas of the site with an inherent flexibility for not only day to day use but the long term capacity to adapt to evolving and changing requirements as the family grows and ages.

It re-engages with the street and community allowing our children to play in safe environment connected to the street and house. Spaces are specific and flexible, while offering sufficient capacity for personal interpretation and use.

Sustainable Architecture Category

This project includes both a macro and micro approach to sustainability. It also extends the meaning of sustainability beyond environmental to include contextual, social, cultural and economic concerns.

This house will be a case example for the City of Vincent demonstrating the importance of preserving the 1935 Queen Anne Federation home with the capacity to embrace contemporary expectations of living, without comprising the street context or privacy of adjoining properties. The neighbouring house completes the street sequence of ‘twins’ and twins should never be separated.

The removal of material from site is minimised, an attitude of ‘upgrading’ ensures that materials once concealed for structural purposes are now used for furniture, decks, doorframes and architraves.

The upper and lower level spaces are protected from the low, intense summer sun with timber framed fixed and operable screens, the upper level is cooled with a manually operated reticulation system that drip feeds water on to the fabric, hot moving air is rapidly chilled, this is Perth’s largest ‘Coolgardie Safe’, a 19th century low-tech refrigeration system used by the Coolgardie WA gold miners to cool edible goods. Windows are strategically located to maximise cross ventilation or for winter heat gain (north facing highlight window with a deep reveal for shading).

All interior spaces preserve elements of the past, history is layered but never erased. Low energy light fittings, recycled light fittings, low water use and storage, pv cells and solar hot water systems all form part of the sustainable equation but is the focus.

Economy is achieved through re-cycling, restoring, re-interpreting building materials and historic traditions and minimising waste. This project represents a holistic approach to design and dwelling, where memories are preserved, carbon footprint minimised and the concerns of the broader community celebrated.

Context

Folding forms developed from the existing roof achieve a re-interpretation of the surrounding streetscape and roof-scape, binding old and new/ historic and contemporary. A Jekyll and Hyde quality, the street appearance remains almost untouched, a silent figure, a backdrop, the rear is the extrovert, complex and challenging.

A front deck engages with the street, re-introducing the value of the front garden as social setting, a past tradition by the immigrant Italians and Greeks. A mosaic tiled seat offers a place to rest for neighbours. All exterior spaces contain elements of the past, often manifest as objects of intrigue.

Integration of Allied Disciplines

As architect owners we were keen to maintain an open line of discussion that enabled details to be developed and refined as the project evolved. This often involved the capacity to re-use building waste. Our structural engineer and builder eagerly entered in to this arrangement in particular the role of the builder extended beyond the traditional role.

Architects: Caroline Di Costa Architect and iredale pedersen hook architects
Architectural Project Team: Caroline Di Costa, Adrian Iredale, Finn Pedersen, Martyn Hook, Brett Mitchell, Sinan Pirie, Matthew Fletcher.
Structural Engineer: Terpkos Engineering
Builder: Hugo Homes
Completion: December 2013

The post Iredale Pedersen Hook updates a traditional
Perth house with a faceted extension appeared first on Dezeen.

This Central Institute of Technology (CIT) building in Perth, Western Australia by Lyons and local practice T&Z has a copper, silver and coloured metal panel facade.

The building brings together programs from three campus locations and provides a new library, lecture theatre and range of formal and informal learning spaces for students.

A large central foyer contains visible circulation for the building, fronted by a large clear glazed wall.

On the underside of the entrance canopy hangs the shell of a swimming pool, an artwork by Stephen Neille and Jurek Wybraniec.

More stories about education on Dezeen »

Here is some information from the architects:

Central Institute of Technology

Introduction

Lyons, an Australian wide architectural practice, in association with Perth architectural company T&Z were shortlisted in April 2006 to undertake a limited design competition sponsored by Central Institute of Technology (CIT). The competition was judged by CIT Senior Executive and Geoffrey London, the WA Government Architect at that time. Upon winning the design competition, the brief and concept design ideas were developed in consultation with the CIT Senior Executive and a range of user groups.

The project collocates a range of programs from three CIT campuses at Leederville, Subiaco and Mount Lawley to the new B2 Building site in Northbridge, bringing together teaching programs for architectural technicians, engineering technicians and beauty technicians. The programs are collocated with CIT’s Central Library and a diverse range of student learning spaces both formal and informal.

The Social Heart – Making a Campus Space

One of the key drivers of this project was to connect the existing buildings on Aberdeen Street and their 1970’s landscape, across Aberdeen Street, to make a larger urban space with the new building. The idea of the ‘social heart’ as a connecting device across the street became a critical design driver for the project. This space will become a focus for the campus but also a major entrance foyer to the learning commons and other educational spaces within the building.

The Social Heart foyer in effect triples the size of the implied urban space and connects the old building and the new building together. The social heart is half inside and half outside, barely separated visually by a large clear glazed façade wall running diagonal to the street grid. The space is designed as one space, indoor and outdoor, connecting together structural, formal and material languages to create a larger urban space. Stairs, ramps and lifts are all visible and highly accessible from the social heart to make way finding easy, and so the heart feels continually alive with movement.

The building has a very large floor-plate size, so the central sky lit atrium brings natural light deep into the library and learning environment. This atrium can be seen from the social heart at high level. Rooms are organised around the atrium with large windows looking into the space. The curved north side of the building is formed by the constraint of the adjacent underground road tunnel. Significant public entrances connect the building to its surroundings on its four corners. High levels of glazing at street level increase visually connectivity into and from the building. The large roof form slopes to follow the fall of the land to William Street.

A Visual Design Language for B2

Visually this building explores the relationship between the indigenous natural environment and the local mining industry in Western Australia, both aspects of which are represented in the educational functions within the building. Stratified open cut mines, precious metals, turtle shells, blackened sticks, metal mining bridges, black and white striped shadows in the atria, termite mounds in the red desert serve as a rich visual and programmatic narrative to inform the aesthetics of the building.

For instance the social heart was conceived of as an ‘excavation’ along the Aberdeen Street facade, or kind of gigantic man made cave, an extraordinary wondrous artefact. The mining engineering cultures are loosely represented with the industrially scaled blackened pipe structural columns ‘propping’ the overhanging building and glazed wall.

The lecture theatre in the social heart is like a rock in the landscape that has resisted the ‘dig’. The patterned concrete forming the external wall of the small lecture theatre under the stairs in the social is representative of a turtle shell which is an enduring symbol of the local indigenous culture.

The horizontal striations on the facade which provide deep sun-shaded overhangs to the windows are representative of an open cut mine or natural erosions in the landscape (like the Bungle Bungle Ranges). The copper, silver and coloured metallic facade panels reflect the wealth of natural resources in WA.

The architectural technician’s design studios are evidenced most strongly on the upper levels at the highest point an architectural house gable frame is rendered as a massive scale window, its mullions offset by noggings bracing at cross studs.

Interior ideas

Throughout the building a range of exposed finishes and junctions are designed to continually demonstrate the constructive nature of the building as a kind of living, heuristic environment for the occupants within. The approach to materials is to mix rawness, manufactured pattern and customised decoration to provide high levels of texture and visual interest within the interior.

The library/learning centre ceiling is flat off form concrete decorated in split circular acoustic panels conceived as a massive dot painting on a bare surface.

The red carpeted floor of the library is representative of the desert, and the project learning rooms are shaped like termite mounds protruding from the earth.

This turtle shell pattern is also repeated above the library one-stop-shop service desk – a floating shell adjacent to the dot-painted ceiling. The shell also wraps the upper level theatrette.

The library service desk is also like a down-scaled outback Wave Rock, a WA icon transported into the library in miniature form.

The bridge link across the atrium is reminiscent of a brightly painted yellow metal elevator cage extracted from the mine shaft and turned around and laid horizontal across the gap.

The skylight atrium walls are clad predominantly in white contoured metal sheet folding across the internal stairs and staff offices, ‘white for light’. The black stripes are like shadows in a bright world, laid into the space as a kind of orienting device.

Air-conditioning ducts are exposed and colour-coded to represent supply and return paths, adding to the constructed and ‘instructive’ nature of the interiors.

The Cloud

The swimming pool hanging on the underside of the entrance canopy is a piece of art by Stephen Neille and Jurek Wybraniec commissioned by CIT/Department of Housing Works in their percentage of budget for artists programme. Stephen and Jurek were selected from a range of artists’ submissions on the basis of a captivating notion – a cloud, a chrome swimming pool, a suburban symbol, a piece of nature.

There is also a kidney-shaped cobble stone inset in the social heart foyer, each cobble engraved with place names and meaningful moments in TAFE history. These cobbles are grouted up with ‘super-blue’ grout, again, an idea connecting the old world with the suburban swimming pool surround.

Sustainability

The building design has incorporated a number of ‘passive’ and engineering sustainability initiatives.

Windows to the north and west are heavily shaded by the ‘formal striations’ and the glass used is very high performance. The large windows along Aberdeen Street are shielded from the late afternoon heat by facing towards the social heart.

The skylight atrium will open automatically late at night to ‘purge’ the hot daytime air from the building interior and introducing new cool air for the morning occupants.

Stormwater from the roof is retained on site and settled prior to releasing into the city system.

Click above for larger image

Internally the air-conditioning system is a modular one so that rooms that are unoccupied can be ‘turned off’ to save energy.

Click above for larger image

The library has a low velocity underfloor air-conditioning system to bring in cool air at occupant level. The concrete ceilings and block work walls are exposed to take benefit of the ‘thermal mass cooling’ inherent in heavy materials and reduce maintenance.

Click above for larger image

Low energy long life light fittings are also occupant controlled.

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

See also:

.

Business Faculty by Hoz Fontan Arquitectos	PKU University of Law by Kokaistudios	Warrnambool Campus Building by Lyons