Subtle Depth – James Hardie x Lineburg Wang

Deftly manipulating two-dimensional surfaces to create depth and shadow, Lineburg Wang has collaborated with James Hardie to conceptualise the extension of a pre-war cottage using Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding.

As part of a collaborative series initiated by James Hardie to exhibit the architectural potential of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding, this project is a concept-only design. While it does not exist in material reality, is intended as an eminently achievable and realistic design that responds to the needs of real clients who the collaborators, Lynn Wang and Michael Lineburg of Brisbane-based architecture firm Lineburg Wang, see every day in their practice. They approached the design for an extension to a typical traditional Queenslander with a sense of modern refinement, drawing on real-world construction applications of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding.

With a focus on layers, movement, and depth as a surface to foster shadows, Lineburg Wang’s use of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding offers to this extension a thought provoking, architectural point of difference.

Rather than filling the remainder of the site with more building, Lynn describes advocating for “less built form with more considered openings, [which see] the house operating as a service spine to the generous outdoor spaces.” The exterior of the extension is clad in Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding, a ready-to-paint fibre cement product embedded with the texture of fine render, which serves as a soft and stylised backdrop to the garden and its activities. “The extension mediates the terrain from the elevated cottage to the garden,” Michael explains. In this way, the house is modernised by the fluid relationship between indoor and outdoor space that is so essential to modern living.

The point of difference in this contemporary cornerstone, however, is the way that Lineburg Wang instilled the wall of the extension with a unique sense of depth. Inspired by the surface of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding, “a light dimpled coarseness which casts a textured shadow,” as Michael describes it, an early consideration was how to accentuate shadows using the cladding. Rather than simply apply it as a two-dimensional surface, “the product is instead pleated or layered from the top down,” Michael explains – an application that offers architectural interest through varying surface dimensions and the shadows cast across the textured surface.

As part of a collaborative series initiated by James Hardie to exhibit the architectural potential of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding, this project is a concept-only design.

Lynn elaborates on the concept of depth within the project, which resulted in “the product turning the corner and creating a deep entry threshold, much like an eave.” The Hardie™ 9mm Slimline Corner 3000mm was used to achieve this detail, while the manoeuvring of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding to create this threshold between indoors and out was enabled by the product’s “thinness as a sheet [which] is emphasised by its lapping,” she explains. The 8.5-millimetre panels have shiplap joints on the long edges that allow for a clean look and versatile implementation, with the v-groove at the shiplap joints creating a subtle rhythm of vertical lines.

Lineburg Wang paid close attention to the product’s intrinsic functional and material qualities when conceiving the design. The cladding acts as its own drip edge that expels water. The pleats of the exterior extension follow the sloping site downhill, continuing fluidly on from the original dwelling and creating various levels for the eye to travel to and from, one of these levels being “the roof terrace [which] over-emphasises this cascading language with an oversized capping to the house below,” says Michael. Lynn describes the interplay between design composition and the capacity of the product, with the cladding’s “standard dimensions informing façade pleat locations, door and window sizes and the language of the interior kitchen cabinetry.” In addition to this, the varying sheet heights of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding (ranging from 2440mm to 3600 mm) were used to “manage datums of the pleats, that in turn relate back to the existing cottage and its own material datums,” she says.

With a focus on layers, movement, and depth as a surface to foster shadows, Lineburg Wang’s use of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding offers to this extension a thought provoking, architectural point of difference.

Lineburg Wang paid close attention to the product’s intrinsic functional and material qualities when conceiving the design.