15 Degrees
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Design Team: Joshua Mulford
z3160740@student.unsw.edu.au, 0405235334
Institution: University of New South Wales, 2nd year Masters of Architecture students (2011)
Project description: "15 Degrees"
Our design grew from an initial aim to break up the quintessential suburban block of a house sandwiched between two large yards with little or no interaction with houses on the sides. The result is a "house" that's not a single mass but a cluster of living spaces integrated with the outdoors, arranged in a dynamic, moving sequence along a characteristically narrow site typical of subdivided suburban lots.
The plan is an arrangement of living spaces progressing from public to private, from street level high up down the hill, with the circulation axis weaving throughout the spaces. The individual "pavilions" are arranged on angles to maximise opportunities for northern and eastern sun gain whilst minimising the west, this also allows for more flexibility for the size and variations in shape in the individual pavilions as well as opening up visual access to the neighbouring blocks, minimising the claustrophobic zones in between houses and creating opportunities for interaction between neighbours.
At the expense of a traditional large yard, outdoor spaces are dispersed in the form of a sequence of private courtyards adjacent to individual rooms, to let light, air and landscape to permeate the house.
The dispersing of the singular house into individual pavilions means that they may be arranged in different angles, sequences and proportions to suit blocks of varying dimensions (although our scheme was realized with the consideration of the typically long and narrow character of suburban lots), levels, sun orientations as well as the needs of the occupants. ThinkBrick products are used in a fresh and playful way, but with integrity so to create a house that is exciting and modern yet simultaneously familiar and evoke the warmth of home.
The result is a slanting architecture, as the walls, floors and roofs of each pavilion step, twist and turn their way down the site, with walls that play with the materiality, pattern and surface of a traditional building material.
