Design Mag Vol 3

design

mag |

South-east Queensland’s sub-tropical climate with its

marked diurnal (day into night) temperature

movements is ideal for a passive design which

harnesses thermal changes to stabilise temperatures

in a home to within a comfortable range.

This family home in Pullenvale, 15 kilometres from the

Brisbane CBD, exploits the four pillars of passive design

– orientation, ventilation, insulation and thermal mass

– to create an environment that does not rely on artificial

heating and cooling.

Despite its relative closeness to Brisbane, Pullenvale is a

semi-rural area with large houses on even larger blocks.

The owners of this property lived next to their new site for

over ten years.They were looking for a home that could

separately accommodate their two young-adult sons

and frequent overseas visitors, while bringing the family

together for meals.

Their new home sits in a natural clearing straddling the

top of a ridge.The one-hectare greenfield site has a

stunning northerly aspect.“It’s perfect,” enthuses

architect Karen Ognibene of Arkhefield,.“You couldn’t

ask for better.There are beautiful views over the

surrounding hills and from certain points in Pullenvale

you can see right down to the border ranges between

Queensland and New South Wales.”

Despite having previously lived in a classic timber

Queenslander, the owners, originally from South Africa,

didn’t want their new house to “touch the ground lightly,”

Karen explains.“They wanted it to feel like it had grown

out of the ground, quite the opposite to a

Queenslander!”Aside from the accommodation

requirements, this was top of their brief.

That’s not surprising, as South Africa has a strong

heritage of building in brick, stone and concrete.

However the selection of brick was not a foregone

conclusion.“We tossed around various materials but in

the end came back to brick because of its richness,”

says Karen.“Stone can also be rich but structurally it has

to be fixed to concrete block or the like and all of a

sudden it starts to lose its integrity.”

The spine of the house is a massive brick wall travelling

40 metres along the southern elevation and rising to an

average of about four metres. Behind the wall is a

circulation corridor allowing access to the linear room

programming. Joinery is also built into the brickwork,

including wine storage and part of the kitchen.

Two more cavity brick walls bookend the house, running

at right angles to the southern wall.A fireplace is built

into each of these flanking walls, indoor to the east

servicing the living area, outdoor to the west warming a

terrace.These two walls and the southerly spine wall

enclose the entertaining space.

Unusually (for south-east Queensland at least) these

walls are constructed in cavity brickwork and finished as

face brickwork, internally and externally.

We asked Karen why she and her clients chose internal

face brickwork.“Brick is such a rich material,” she

considers.“The balance of the interior has quite a crisp,

clean modernist aesthetic with white walls, a lot of glass

facing north and nice polished floors. Brick was just a

way of bringing the landscape into the house and it

gave an enhanced texture without adding another

material to the palette.”

Two brick types were chosen from the Daniel Robertson

range of premium quality clay bricks: Hawthorn Black

and London Blend.These were expertly blended to

create a distinct visual aspect for this project.“They look

rich, quite rustic, like they have been dug out of the

ground,” Karen contends.

This was taken a step further by laying a course of

Roman (50mm high) bricks for every four courses of

standard height (76mm) bricks.The resultant banding is

a subtle disturbance from the expected regular pattern

of brickwork.

Not satisfied with that, the decision was made to lightly

rake (recess) the horizontal mortar joints and flush finish

the vertical joints.“So when you look down the wall you

read the horizontal nature of the brickwork rather than

the individual brick form.”

A sustainable, contemporary family home rises

out of a ridge not far from Brisbane’s centre

Project:

Pullenvale House

Location:

Pullenvale QLD

Function:

Family home

Architect:

Arkhefield

Structural engineer:

Bligh Tanner

Builder:

MCD Construction

Bricklayer:

Gabao (Keith Cockburn)

Featured products:

Daniel Robertson premium clay

bricks in Hawthorn Black and London Blend, standard

height (76mm) and Roman (50mm high)

Photography:

Angus Martin