Cabbage Tree House by Peter Stutchbury Architecture

Emerging from the hillside, Cabbage Tree House is a built manifestation of place, with a purpose to heighten the understanding and emotional experience of the land that informs the architecture.

The house is the outcome of time the architects and clients spent with the land, learning its qualities and spatial topography. From this process, a triad of elements, in a geographical sequence of sorts – a flat plateau above a steep slope with a creek below – was established, from which the nature of the building as an element of connection became clear.

“The creek is incredibly beautiful,” says Stutchbury. “The noise, the smell and the coolness that comes from it are a real asset to the site.

On such a steep landscape, flat land is at a premium, explains Peter Stutchbury, who designed the house along with architects Emma Trask and Belinda Koopman. A flat plateau offers space that can be used for recreation, whether in the form of vegetable gardens, somewhere to sit outdoors in the sun, a backyard cricket pitch or a place to gather with friends and family. In order to devote the flat area of the land to recreation, it was consequential to site the building into the hill itself, acting as stairs between the plateau and the creek. “The creek is incredibly beautiful,” says Stutchbury. “The noise, the smell and the coolness that comes from it are a real asset to the site. What’s very typical of our work is the connection with land and a respect of land, and we felt that if we could construct a building that bridged from the plateau down to the creek, we could initiate this connection.”

Through the fusion of the built form and the earth, the building becomes a connecting force between the land and its inhabitants. Stutchbury describes the building as a “sky-ground connection”. One approaches the building from the elevated plateau at the top of the hill, and then descends the hillside through the house, with the building acting as a conduit within the landscape.

Through the fusion of the built form and the earth, the building becomes a connecting force between the land and its inhabitants.

The kitchen, bathroom and bedroom are all located on the one level, “then, you descend to a second living level, and as you descend things become more basic until it is just a bath and a fire, so it feels like you are bathing in the creek,” says Stutchbury. In its cave-like nature, the house is elemental, serving to amplify the experience of the land.

“Your experience of the site and the story of the site changes on a daily basis – the climate changes, people change – so if you develop that capacity in the building, it is never a static building,” says Stutchbury. “If you look at the buildings that are most seductive, they have a very strong connection to the site and an appreciation for what the natural systems can add to the qualities that inform a house or a building.”

“Your experience of the site and the story of the site changes on a daily basis – the climate changes, people change – so if you develop that capacity in the building, it is never a static building.”

In the materiality of masonry and concrete, and the form anchored into the site, Cabbage Tree House strongly emphasises the architecture’s relationship with the earth. The other three elements of nature, wind, fire and water, are also actively engaged in the design. The house is a “protective armature that sits with its back into the hill and opens its arms to the north,” says Stutchbury. This northern orientation serves to enhance the relationship between the elements – the building’s substantial thermal mass storing the warmth from both the sun and the wood fire in winter. In summer, thermal mass, air and water work in concert to passively cool the house, with cross-flow ventilation drawing breezes across the creek below and the pool adjacent to the living space.

The architects’ sensitivity to scale and emphasis on the quality of the light within the spaces of the home results in a building that devotes itself to habitation with care. While the scale of the architecture appears grand, Cabbage Tree House is not large. Each space is modest and restrained, reflecting the intent to pare back the dwelling to what is essential. “When you design a house, you must consider the human, and once you consider the human, you’ve got to consider the scale and what level of scale is comfortable in any situation,” says Stutchbury. “The scale of the forest, the valley, the sky is very big. We were working from those scales, and we were also working with the temperament of scale – what it brings to one’s behavioural temperament.”

The architects’ sensitivity to scale and emphasis on the quality of the light within the spaces of the home results in a building that devotes itself to habitation with care.

The primal imperative to seek shelter is balanced with the equally fundamental pull towards the sun. The architects sought to create “pools of sun”, says Stutchbury. A circular skylight penetrates the concrete ceiling, the shaft bringing in a generous puddle of sunlight. It also references scale, with the glimpse of the sky and the trees a small reminder of the enormity of the natural world outside.

Drawing on a deep respect for the land, Cabbage Tree House is an exploration of how the built environment and the natural world impact each other. Above all, it is a representation of how – consciously, deliberately and with reverence – architecture can form a relationship between human beings and the landscape in which they live.

Architecture by Peter Stutchbury Architecture. Build by Capital Construction and Refurbishing.