Canopy House

2010

The Canopy House is a neither a suburban dwelling nor is it a beach house.

The house aspires to a lineage of climatically responsive, site specific projects offering a contemporary and appropriate mode of living and expression.

The Clients who plan to relocate from Darwin (our most northern and Asian influenced capital) have infused this project with a desire to live 'informally, but with occasion'. Priority is given to the semi-private outdoor living platform fixed between the flanking elements of the living pavilion and the master bedroom tower. The form of the house responds to the polarised scale within and beyond the site; the immediate scale of the retained schlerophyll bush canopy (eucalypts, blood-woods, she-oaks and cypress pines) towards the street and the distant horizon views west towards Mt. Tinbeerwah over the environmental reserve.

A three neighboured lot, the carefully considered placement and elevation of the living platform anticipates yet to be constructed adjacencies and aims to ensure long term amenity, tempered with a degree of privacy. Detailed in Australian hardwood and celebrated in the floating ply-lined canopy overhead, the continuity between this space and the landscape is key.

It is hoped the memory of the house is essentially an exterior rather than an interior one, both for the Owners and the one time visitor.

Regional Commendation, Sunshine Coast Region, RAIA Queensland Architecture Awards, 2011

Photography: Camera Obscura + Phorm