A Warm Elevation – Clay Fern House by Paul Butterworth Architect
Clay Fern House reimagines an existing Queenslander form, maintaining its existing and traditional elements. Paul Butterworth Architect overlays a cohesive framework to elevate everyday functionality and reinforce key connections internally, between inside and out.
Working mostly within the existing confines of the present home, Clay Fern House sees the creation of a better sense of flow and movement across the site, elevating the everyday through a better connection to natural elements. The new works culminate with the creation of a generous outdoor room encased in slatted timber sides, allowing ventilation and natural light to pass through the space and form moving shadows throughout the day. While the addition needed to be contained due to its own sensible budget, the impact of the main outdoor room redefines the home. Paul Butterworth Architect focuses on enhancing the existing and, through minor edits, allows the home to meet its potential.
Collaboratively, Clay Fern House is built by Rokco Builds and sees a curated landscape design by Green Care Project. Like all Queenslander homes, the main form sits elevated on stilts, leaving the ground floor plane free for breezes and for an additional area to be crafted into useable landscape space. In this case, the plan was to optimise the ground floor and create spaces both covered and uncovered, which could be occupied and used as an extension of the home itself. Focusing on light and creating a home that could be opened was key to ensuring it felt contemporary and relevant. The option to add an additional deck was explored but, due to the closeness of the nearby railway, bringing the key outdoor space down to the ground level became the solution.
The additional creation of a new garage, kitchen, laundry and bathrooms allows the new enclosed outdoor space and its detailing to be felt and brought internally. Acting almost as a secondary façade to the kitchen and living spaces, the timber veil adds shading whilst also bringing in dappled light. Maintaining the character features of the home was key and informed the resulting material selections, ensuring the new felt like it was conceived at the same time as the original. A muted tonality is used throughout, binding the spaces and reinforcing a sense of flow, adding warmth through timber along the way.
A muted tonality is used throughout, binding the spaces and reinforcing a sense of flow, adding warmth through timber along the way.
Through a curated approach, Clay Fern House by Paul Butterworth Architect is gifted a generous outdoor space as a main interrogation of the existing. The addition’s presence ripples throughout the home, elevating the connection to natural light and changing the daily experience of the interior space.
