Tridente

Project Team

Tridente Architects, Darengineers, BCA Engineers

Setting

Australian Suburbia

Charging ahead

Bucking the trend for conformity in housing signified by the Red Rhinoceros, Paul Boyce and Nick Tridente from Tridente Architects in Adelaide have formulated their quintessential house with its alternate method of construction to challenge contemporary suburbia. They reference the 1959 Eugene Ionesco play Rhinoceros, which addresses the themes of conformity and our sense of reality, to draw a parallel of this with Australian suburban culture. Their proposal aims to provide better accommodation within these existing parameters.

“We are keeping within the constraints of the standard project home, but are looking for new spatial relationships, and new ways of treating form and on-site development, instead of trying to find a new way to sub-divide land,” Boyce says.

To this end, the architects have reinterpreted a typical project house to create an environmentally responsive dwelling made from folded forms, which can undulate in sympathy with the land’s natural contours. In a street each house could be personalised by bold colours to the glazed bricks of the entry alcove and to the coloured sandwich panels concealed like jewels within the seemingly random pores in the outer skin. The first of the three layers in its new “bigger brick” construction system.

Construction is framed around a new system of prefabricated brickwork panels. The inner layer - of solid brickwork for thermal mass - is interspersed with glazed windows and doors for cross-flow ventilation and natural light. The middle layer – of polystyrene sandwich panels clad in coloured metal lining – provide insulation and weather proofing. The outer layer - of perforated brickwork - provides solar control, permeability and a visual screen for privacy, for the occupants and adjacent neighbours.

After reviewing the evolution of Australian house design, Boyce and Tridente concluded that the current trend for generously sized and well-appointed two-storey homes on small lots had resulted in the loss of outdoor space, community amenity and relevance to modern times.

Influenced by their experiences raising families, both architects were keen to design for flexibility and longevity. Downstairs, separate pavilions housing a garage, an entertainment room and open-plan living areas arranged to frame an internal terrace and courtyard, making indoor-outdoor living an attractive prospect.

Upstairs, the bedrooms are connected by pivoting walls, so they can be opened into each other if needed, catering to a range of circumstances such as tending to a newborn baby, enabling siblings to share their belongings, or for one-off occasions such as birthday sleepovers. “The pivot walls blur the boundaries and provide additional connections between the rooms,” Boyce says. “It means the bedrooms are more flexible over time.”

The architects concede that while construction costs for a single version of this house could eclipse those of a typical project home, the design aspirations and construction techniques could be readily incorporated into current building methodologies. With economies of scale and the repetition of mass production, their alternative to the Red Rhinoceros could become a serious competitor in the project home market, they say.

“We endeavoured to come up with a design that would be perceived by the market as a house, which uses traditional forms – albeit slightly twisted – so that it doesn’t appear out of context,” Tridente says. “The notion of suburbia is one that’s embedded in our psyche, but we think there is plenty of opportunity for architects to provide better forms that fit within that context.”

“We think change will be brought about by volume and perception,” he adds. “If a new system is perceived as being simple, it will be embraced by home builders. This is a low-tech solution that delivers a high-performing living environment. We spent a lot of time thinking about traditional methods and how you could reflect a higher level of technological innovation in a mass-produced product.”