Travaillant le bois comme personne, à l’image d’une boulangerie à Carlton, les australiens de March Studio ont eu l’excellente idée de suspendre 2000 pièces de bois suspendues dans l’enceinte de ce building Nishi à Canberra, pour un rendu absolument incroyable. Plus de détails dans la suite de l’article.
A twisted angular roof oversails this extension to a suburban house in Melbourne by Australian architects March Studio (+ slideshow).
March Studio, which is best known for designing a series of stores for Aesop, was tasked with renovating an existing bungalow in Kensington and adding an extension that doubles the size of the interior.
For the existing house, the architects retained the Edwardian facade but re-planned the interior to accommodate only bedrooms and bathrooms.
The new two-storey structure extends from the rear of the house. The architects excavated part of the ground, allowing them to create a concrete basement and parking area with a timber-clad ground-floor level above.
“The new extension is not meant to be sympathetic to an older style but rather has been shaped by the clients’ brief, solar access and one of Melbourne’s best views back onto the city,” said the architects.
The angular black-zinc roof extends over a large living and dining room, and is angled up at two corners to allow light to filter in through clerestory windows.
“This simple twisting operation grabs light and views,” said the architects. “The action and drama of the twist is expressed and amplified on the ceiling below by a series of hand-plugged timber battens.”
The concrete structure on the level below contains a children’s playroom with circular glass skylights overhead, as well as a wine cellar, a laundry room and a bathroom.
A car can be parked beneath the projecting upper level, while a terrace and garden are positioned just beyond.
The building is named Mullet House, as a reference to the hairstyle that different at the back than at the front. According to the architects, a passerby has described the house as “formal up front with the party out the back”.
Here’s some text from the architects:
Mullet House
Situated in Melbourne’s inner-city suburb of Kensington, ‘The Mullet’ performs contorted gymnastics in order to facilitate an ambitious brief on a small, yet opportunistic site.
The clients, Scott Smith and Phoebe Moore, wanted to commission not only a new and comfortable home, but also sought a challenging design. Running a family business in construction, Scott and Phoebe’s own home would become an opportunity for them to showcase their own capabilities.
A Heritage overlay shaped the design for the front of the dwelling, requiring that the cottage facade and first few rooms flanking Hardiman Street be retained and renovated, (red roof and all). This is where the formality is, the face to the heritage land of Eastwood Street blends seamlessly with its cottage neighbours. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms are resolved into the pre-determined Edwardian shell, freeing up the new extension for the living areas.
The fun begins to emerge when rounding Hardiman Street. ‘I don’t like it’ – says one of the locals half way through construction. ‘It’s not in keeping with the area…’ The new extension is not meant to be sympathetic to an older style but rather been shaped by the clients’ brief, solar access and one of Melbourne’s best views back onto the city.
The balancing act that the local resident detested emerged when the brief called for off-street parking. The house would straddle the parking area, and even with the grade of Hardiman Street to advantage, excavation was unavoidable. Since a digger would be coming to site anyway, the opportunity to dig a little deeper and sink a large concrete box (along with the children in it) was far too good to refuse.
Buried within the concrete box is the rumpus room, wine cellar, laundry, and an additional bathroom. The box is capped with a concrete lid and garnished with strategically placed, trafficable glass skylights. The monolithic form anchors the new building into the side of the hill and is finished internally by the rough reality of building – and being – underground.
The concrete lid of the concrete box is not only the ceiling for below, but also the floor in both the kitchen and exterior deck. The pivot around which the other spaces are spun, the kitchen serves all parts of the house, while the dining and living areas are tucked up above the garage and closer to the night sky of Melbourne’s city lights. Timber battens clad the extension, wrapping the three spaces together and providing a linear base for the last hovering piece.
Soaring above the living spaces is the black zinc roof. On the northern edge the roof is pulled up to increase natural light to the northwest corner, and pushed down to the neighbouring building on Hardiman Street on the northeast, so as not to overshadow it. On the south side, the operation is reversed, and the southwest corner is lifted to create a framed view of the city. This simple twisting operation grabs light and views from two corners and anchors the remaining two with rain heads falling to collection tanks. The action and drama of the twist is expressed and amplified on the ceiling below by a series of hand-plugged timber battens.
Slideshow: Australian practice March Studio conceived this Melbourne bakery as an oversized breadbasket.
The undulating wooden slats that cover the rear wall and ceiling of the shop function as shelves for storing and displaying breads of different shapes and sizes.
A wooden chopping board spans the length of the bakery to create a countertop with integrated pockets for scales, knives, crumb-catchers and checkouts.
March Studio were also the designers for a series of unusual shops for skincare brand Aesop – see them here.
Here’s the story of the project from March Studio:
Baker D. Chirico
“Just bread”, he said, and passed us a loaf.
“Just bread?”, we said, and thought of containers for bread. Baskets, cooling racks, peels. A basket the size of a shop. A basket that was also a rack. A single gesture.
A Wall Of Bread.
Bread is a simple product, of few ingredients, traditionally displayed and sold simply. The art of a baker such as D. Chirico is to perfect a simple process and do it like few others. The results are evident in their reputation.
At the Carlton edition of Baker D. Chirico, March Studio have taken inspiration from this example, crafting an interior with a simple purpose: to cool the bread fresh out of the oven, to display it naked of packaging and ready to be portioned and sold.
An undulation of CNC routed plywood forms wall and ceiling. Subtractions from the wall provide display areas for bread; the varying depths of the shelves and heights of the subtractions meticulously arranged to accommodate long baguettes, large round pagnotta, ficelle loaves and other creations. The variety and expanse of the wall gives freedom to arrange and alter the display according to mood or season.
“And I’ll sell it by the kilo”, he said, and showed us a knife.
“By the kilo?”, we said (we didn’t always repeat what he’d said as a question) and thought of chopping boards. A chopping board the size of a counter.
Standing in firm counterpoint to the wave of the bread wall, the central counter is conceived of as a giant chopping board, intended to wear and patina gracefully with age and use. Scales, crumb trays, knife holders and POS terminals each have a place on this working bench, all subsumed into the simple sales concept – chop loaf, wrap and sell.
“And maybe some nougat”, he said. “Nah, just bread”, we said.
The walls, floor and ceiling of this store in Paris by Melbourne practice March Studio are covered by 3,500 pieces of wood.
Created for skincare brand Aesop inside an eighteenth-century building, the interior was inspired by parquet flooring.
Products are displayed on planks jutting from the walls.
The ash timber was sourced from managed forests in Victoria, Australia, then cut and hand-worked on the outskirts of Melbourne before being labelled and shipped to Paris for assembly on site.
La boutique Aesop rue Saint-Honoré se situe dans un immeuble du dix-huitième siècle au cœur du quartier historique de Paris, proche du Palais Royal.
L’architecture intérieure a été conçue par Rodney Eggleston (March Studio, Melbourne), en collaboration avec Dennis Paphitis, le fondateur d’Aesop. Eggleston a réfléchi aux matériaux qui selon lui étaient le plus emblématiques de Paris. “Nous avons d’abord en envisagé d’utiliser du plâtre, mais nous avons vite été intrigués par les sols en parquets que l’on trouve un peu partout à Paris,” dit-il. “Nous sommes partis de l’idée d’utiliser un seul et unique matériau pour tout l’espace. Nous avons donc imaginé un agencement entièrement en bois découpé et posé de manière à recouvrir intégralement le sol, les murs et le plafond et permettant de créer une atmosphère à la fois chaleureuse et homogène.”
Le bois choisi pour la boutique est le frêne de Victoria, issu de forêts renouvelables australiennes. Environ 3500 pièces de bois ont été découpées et travaillées à la main dans un atelier situé à Richmond, un quartier de la périphérie de Melbourne, avant d’être soigneusement numérotées, rangées dans un container et expédiées à Paris par bateau.
Aesop Saint-Honoré 256, rue Saint-Honoré Paris 75001
Melbourne practice March Studio have trapped 4500 cardboard boxes behind netting in this store for Australian skincare brand Aesop.
Located within Parisian concept store Merci, the installation uses the brand’s own packaging in an undulating installation that rises up one wall and spreads across the ceiling.
merci is housing the Australian cosmetics brand Aesop for a spectacular installation in the Orangerie from 18th of December.
For merci, Aesop founder Dennis Paphitis challenged Australian architect Rodney Eggleston to imagine an original installation for the space. The project is emblematic of Eggleston’s play on repetition and the elevation of everyday objects from commonplace to statement.
Rodney Eggleston, founder of March Studio, is an Australian architect of 29 years who lives and works in Melbourne. He began his career with Rem Koolhas and has worked in partnership with Aesop for 7 of the brand’s signature stores, most recently Aesop Saint-Honoré, which opened in September at 256, rue Saint-Honoré, Paris.
The installation consists of 4500 cardboard shippers and 40m2 of netting.
Melbourne architects March Studio have hung 30 km of coconut-husk string from the ceiling of a new shop in Singapore for Australian skincare brand Aesop. (more…)
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.