NATIONAL PARK REPLACEMENT DWELLING
The owners of the Courtyard House approached Studio BAD to reimagine their home, as currently the house has a disjointed and fragmented layout, which is not suitable for their young family. The existing house is also poorly constructed, and not at all energy efficient to make comfortable throughout the year, due to the issues around retrofitting it was decided to replace the building.
The design of the new home echo’s the existing dwelling, taking inspiration from the form and materiality, delivered in a contemporary way to fit the needs of the family. The design offers a greatly improved spatial plan for the tight, elongated site. Studio BAD’s approach has looked to enhance the site constraints, by re-organising the existing internal spaces with two cut-outs made in the form of courtyards to break up the linear nature of the single storey home. Each courtyard offers private moments of pause and a connection to the outside landscape, adding to the feeling of space without increasing the footprint of the dwelling.
The courtyards are used as a key to the internal zoning of the property. At the front of the house is the office, snug and master bedroom, with private courtyard. The middle zone, with the children’s bedroom, share the visual connection to the initial courtyard, and the rear of the property is for family living, with kitchen and ‘social’ second courtyard designed for outdoor cooking and entertaining. The courtyards also offer much needed soft landscaped spaces, a key requirement from the client brief as currently all external spaces are hardscaped and unsuitable for the young family to enjoy.
The existing outhouses will also be replaced as part of the development, designed to the same footprint and clad to fit in visually with the main building, these spaces will offer the family space for a dedicated yoga studio and much needed children’s den.
The new home offers flexibility for contemporary living with increased functionality and future proofing to suit the growing family. Designed sensitively for the rural setting, the low timber framed home is vertically clad in charred timber, to compliment and echo the forest context.