Overview
Situated beneath the Richmond Ranges south of Nelson, this pavilion provides new living environments for the more important members of a flamboyant inter-generational family. Whereas the family's existing farmhouse holds tight contained spaces within perimeter walls, the new pavilion provides open and elongated transitional spaces to connect living with landscape.
Like the mountain range above them, the new house folds and concertinas in silhouette to allow a single large space to be articulated through volume rather than between walls. The timber ceiling lifts and shapes in parallel against the timber floor, flooding the space between with warmth and an ever changing light, whilst defining connected sitting, dining and kitchen areas within a single communal space for all the family to converge and spread out within.
Structure
The design of the house’s stunning zigzag roof was inspired by the slopes of the mountain peaks it overlooks. The roof played an important role in determining the design of the interior spaces.
The roof was used to delineate the internal living spaces through sloping wooden ceiling panels, which mark the sitting, dining and kitchen areas through their height while maintaining an overall open communal space.
Interior
Though wood was used primarily in just two parts of the glass and concrete house, in the ceilings and floors, it is the dominant component of the house’s interior.
For the ceiling he used hoop pine plywood sheets with a poplar batten.
A continuous row of battens, covering the long ply sheet joins, mitre along the length of the ceiling to pattern and delineate the folding ceiling from one end of the building to the other. The space then becomes legible, both as a whole, and as a series of folded intermediary spaces.
