The Poetic and The Pragmatic – CLT House by FMD Architects

The product of ingrained rigour and a commitment to sustainability, CLT House is the result of a close collaboration between builder and architect forged over many years of working alongside one another. FMD Architects combines restraint with calm to propose a home that bridges the poetic and the pragmatic.

Set on a working farm, CLT House is a play on tensions and contrasts. It combines the traditional romantic and poetic cues of architectural conceptual thinking with the pragmatic rhetoric of the structural and rational realities of building. From a close collaborative relationship over many years, the bond between builder and architect sees this home as the ideal playground to create, build and resolve together. Intertwined from the initial stages, the resulting home speaks to this highly considered methodology and sees an existing home reinvigorated as the foundational base, with the new elements added above. FMD Architects brings a refinement and understanding of spatial planning and light to inform and inspire a home that is imbued with its own calming influence.

Set on a working farm, CLT House is a play on tensions and contrasts.

Built by CCB Envico, together with structural engineering by Vistek Structural Engineering, the closeness of the working team unfurls as integral to the success of the home. Named after its primary structural contributory component, CLT House was designed from inception with the intent to use CLT (Cross Laminated Timber) technology. Offering strength, efficiency and sustainability, the system becomes part of the architectural expression. Throughout, the structural elements are exposed and expressed as a key experience of living within the home. The strength of the system also gives birth to the heightened internal volumes, which create a saw-toothed formation, allowing high-level lighting internally that naturally illuminates the spaces. The rational and classical references are echoed in the rhythm created, while the 10m-long spans encase smaller slotted openings to allow for cross ventilation and heat escape at the higher level. Extending the language throughout, fittings and screws are exposed as an expression of the building process itself.

It combines the traditional romantic and poetic cues of architectural conceptual thinking with the pragmatic rhetoric of the structural and rational realities of building.

Sitting between the old and the new rests the renovated kitchen space, which draws in influential cues from both. It takes the softer and more muted tones of the new upper floor and combines with darker grounded elements of the original and fuses them together in one space. The expressive upper level timber element acts as part sculpture and part reference to the building itself. Reconfiguring the existing home and punctuating the roof and extending upward, all additional openings are double glazed, with considerable effort to insulate and open the home manually to defy the reliance on active outside energy as much as possible. Connecting to the established gardens, the home opens up to its site and its surrounding vegetation, while the upper floor sits above and looks over the vast tree canopies.

From a close collaborative relationship over many years, the bond between builder and architect sees this home as the ideal playground to create, build and resolve together.

As both a passive and an active series of spaces, CLT House responds to its site and its inhabitants. It is the result of balancing the realistic with the idealised, creating a home of calm that sits comfortably in its setting.

Intertwined from the initial stages, the resulting home speaks to this highly considered methodology and sees an existing home reinvigorated as the foundational base, with the new elements added above.