A Different Level – Corner House by Archier

Corner House by Archier is situated on a challenging square site in Flinders, on the lands of the Bunurong people. Despite its proximity to the picturesque coastline of the Mornington Peninsula, the project’s more immediate context called for a carefully considered strategy that could limit the house’s exposure to the adjacent streets. Responding confidently to this challenge, Corner House deploys a restrained, dark façade to the perimeter of the site that captures and conceals a delicate private courtyard within its walls.

Presenting a solid-looking, fibre cement-clad volume to the street, the project references the board-and-batten detail of typical Flinders fishing cottages from the area, while also offering a glimpse of the timber reveal to the threshold. The strength of this public gesture is initially reinforced by the civic scale of the entrance, which has a ceiling height of over 4 metres. Once inside, however, the internal landscape of Corner House emerges as a defining feature of the project and the space through which the eponymous corners of the dwelling construct a series of meaningful visual connections.

Each corner volume is connected via slender circulation spaces that act as galleries for the clients’ much-loved art collection, facilitating a gradual ascent from the tall, airy studio to the more intimately scaled kitchen, dining and living spaces towards the rear of the site. The project’s consistent, restrained palette transforms material finishes from subdued background textures at the scale of the entrance to tactile details within the more private spaces of the house.

Corner House sets up a productive tension between the refined timber veil, which traces the inner edge of the envelope, and the use of more robust materials and finishes.

Corner House sets up a productive tension between the refined timber veil, which traces the inner edge of the envelope, and the use of more robust materials and finishes. This includes the structural insulated panel system throughout the interior, and the external use of micaceous iron oxide (MIO) paint that provides a hard-wearing finish while adding subtle texture. Bounded by the protective perimeter wall, the glazed, light-filled rooms are able to further open up to the courtyard through the stacking of joinery to the outer edges of the site. Shifting between wardrobe, storage and seating, the joinery appears as a continuous element. This adds depth to the outer wall and generates opportunities for interactions and connections between the rituals of the everyday and precious art objects.

For the clients, the realisation of the project marked a profound moment of change as they retired from demanding careers in architecture and relocated from Melbourne to the Peninsula. With Corner House, Archier needed to deliver not just the precise and thoughtful-yet-unfussy approach to architecture for which the practice has become known, but also a set of spaces that could accommodate an emerging set of new routines and activities.

Corner House celebrates incidental and momentary encounters, almost as if by chance.

For Oskar Kazmanli-Liffen and Chris Gilbert from Archier, it was important to consider strategies that would provide a range of opportunities for parallel modes of occupation, avoiding the more rigid compartmentalisation of doors and walls. “In this project we were really interested in using the house to mediate rather than separate the relationship between the occupants,” they reflect. The resultant dwelling eschews direct or overly choreographed visual connections between glazed volumes. Instead, Corner House celebrates incidental and momentary encounters, almost as if by chance.

The courtyard plays a crucial role in this gesture, operating as an extruded lens for views across the site, as well as a delightful shortcut through the house and an inviting, sheltered outdoor space that also provides access to a guest bedroom at the lower level. Plants within the space – completed with landscape architects Openwork – include three trees that are meaningful to the clients: a dogwood, a Chinese tallow and a fig.

Supported by the carefully offset lines of the corner spaces and the gentle progression of floor levels, this private landscape facilitates oblique and softly obscured glances between each of the interior volumes of the project. As the architects observe, “you’re never really catching someone’s eye, even if you’re observing them from the other parts of the house. There’s never that jarring interaction, it’s always at a different level.” The result is an artful balance between connection and seclusion.

At under 200 square metres, Corner House is a relatively modest two-bedroom home that manages to generate a variety of user-driven experiences and relationships within a small number of spaces, all while maintaining the integrity of a singular, “elemental” architectural gesture. The inclusion of three full-height external pivot doors along the side boundary allow the seemingly static perimeter wall to temporarily break down, welcoming visitors directly into the courtyard.

Such large-scale operable elements have been a feature of earlier Archier projects – like Sawmill House – but here the interaction has been pushed even further away from the performative aspects of movement and towards a more personal relationship between the house and its inhabitants. Beyond the opening of windows or the sliding of doors, the ability to strategically pierce the boundary of Corner House to reveal its inner workings speaks to the commitment to the agency of the inhabitant in Archier’s work.