Ryan House

by Arthouse Architects

After years of completing successful projects together, the builder/owner of this project approached Jorgen Andersen of Arthouse Architects about designing his own family home. The generous sized section provided plenty of scope to explore master planning options, examining connection and protection, solid and void, mass and tension. The resulting house draws from a local rural vernacular, rupturing the traditional gable form, providing an opportunity to scale. Expressing individual gable forms and stitching them together with a flat roof that defines the internal circulation paths provides a legibility and order to the design. Consideration of the requirements of family living are catered for with built in joinery, providing a home for everything.

Commanding and private from the street, the protected entry offers suggestions of what is beyond. Bagged brick walls present a familiar tactility to the entry and juxtapose warmly against the seamed colortseel tray cladding and roofing. An exercise in connection, the entry corridor offers the opportunity of discovery, connecting the inside to out, living to bedrooms. Zones within spaces allow for flexible living and hand-crafted cedar exterior joinery doors slide back to connect terraces. The master suite above the kitchen and dining spaces offers a retreat away from the social and open living areas on the ground floor. The children are well catered for in their wing, bedrooms with ensuites and a separate play room. The house opens up the north with beautifully manicured lawns and gardens, pool and pizza oven.