Restful and Robust – Haxstead Garden House by Tobias Partners
As an embrace of its siting, Haxstead Garden House sits elongated and linear on in its rural milieu, optimising outward views and integrating mechanisms to ensure an effortless climatic comfort. Tobias Partners combines restraint and a highly detailed approach in conjuring a restful and robust place of respite.
Idyllically set in Central Tilba, Haxstead Garden House aims to capture views over the nearby Sapphire Coast of New South Wales while immersing itself in native bushland and a curated landscape setting. In its location, the many rooms that comprise the home open up the internal lived experience to the surrounding natural aspects and create a place of urban disconnect in the process. Home to a growing family of four, the need for a robust and low maintenance resolve finds a match in both a remoteness of location and the flexible functionality of use. The familiar tousle between being in an elevated position and the need to provide a front to the prevailing winds is very much at play here, and the architecture of Tobias Partners responds accordingly, opening and retracting as needed.
Built by Pat Waddell Custom Building, Haxstead Garden House is set within a deliberate and carefully crafted landscape by Myles Baldwin Design. In an address of both the immediate setting of the home and how it interacts with the views beyond, the formal surrounding takes inspiration from the coastal environs and becomes the ideal foundation for the more natural and unyielding elements in the distance. As an additional dwelling on an already established homestead, the home takes the place of several previous garage structures. A combination of north-facing prefabricated steel framework and poured in-situ concrete form the basis for the home and create a resilient foundation for layers of richness and texture to be added.
The structure and the form work in welcomed harmony, with carefully located columns, for example, framing views of nearby Tilba Beach and Bermagui. Stretching east-west on site, the openness of large glazing panels allows expansive views to be captured. The considered nature of the home is the basis for all resulting gestures, and while the landscape provides a buffering, it also becomes its own microclimate. The combined use of timber with the concrete, glass and steel offers a warming element, but still within the same level of restraint. In its absence of the ornamental, the resulting home becomes a meditative place that connects to place and allows its visitors an enviable front row seat to the surrounding nature.
Haxstead Garden House is the embodiment of architecture performing in balance to location, while also being its own interactive place of discovery for its occupants. Through a characteristic dedication to detailing, Tobias Partners has created a home of lasting relevance, befitting of its unique location.
