It is not always necessary however, to forsake all that is old in order to make way for the new. Densifying the residential accommodation in the city does not need to be an either-or conundrum. By adding a second tier, we can retain our historical buildings while moving forward with new development to complement or contrast the existing built fabric.

Vernacular architecture has an inherent ability to achieve a sense of its place. Region specific, it evolves using time-honoured pragmatic tradition. Of course, there is no one universal vernacular for architecture but it generally uses a simple form and that chosen form and its variations are repeated throughout the community. Any charm perceived by vernacular architecture is not necessarily in the individual merit of one building but in the gestalt – where the effect of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

It was this composition of community and the opportunities that presents that I aimed for with this project.

Obviously, designing for a vernacular is something of an oxymoron, but it is possible to transfer the basic factors of vernacular morphology into a more designed composition. Working with local materials, using building techniques that can be easily learned by the local labour force, working with the local landscape and representing the inherent local culture are solid considerations for any new building and which should produce buildings which are of their place.

With all of this in mind, for the new buildings I wanted a form that would relay the residential program of the new architecture to the observer and so resolved to use the symbolic geometry of the simple archetypal house form.

The apartment towers are inter-connected and all face a common, central point, enhancing the sense of community and inclusiveness, and are set at different levels, loosely following the topography of the roofscape, providing an overall composition with the existing buildings on the site and providing lines of sight through to the city beyond.

In recognising the cultural precinct in which this site resides, I have opted to clad the new buildings in Australian works of art. The selection of images is based on paintings from the nineteenth through to the twenty-first century as being representative of the time span of the buildings and the region and they each have a resonance with a typical “house”. For example, Building #1 is hung with Boat by Charles Blackman, c1978 and becomes the Boat House. Building #2 is draped with Down to the Ocean Beach by David Boyd, c1985 and becomes the Beach House. Building #9, for which more detail is provided is clad with Murray River by Doreen Gadsby, 2009 and becomes the River House.

In the spirit of retaining the historical nineteenth and twentieth century buildings on the site, this proposal calls for their refurbishment and restoration for continued and/or repurposed use. It is necessary to demolish only one of the existing buildings, this to make way for an over scale stairway between North Terrace and the newly created public space which lies within the border of the new apartment buildings.

The result of this composition, the accepted form of the house, but over-scale and housing apartment buildings, placed in this uncommon and unfamiliar context challenges our familiarity of the house by putting it on towers and placing it in an atypical context; the familiar forms are out of place, in addition to new built form over old and the hanging of artwork on the outside, has the potential to produce a surrealist scene perhaps not so out of place in this city artscape.

”A very clever and striking scheme, epitomising what we had hoped for ideas about a second city.”

Professor Ian MacDougall, University of Adelaide

ART HOUSE LIVING

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