Slowly Conceived – Lockyer Residence by Shaun Lockyer Architects

The design and construction of any architect’s home is typically a slow-burning process, and Lockyer Residence is one such example, spanning an 18-year period. Shaun Lockyer Architects carefully stages the restoration and additions to the existing heritage home, ensuring a clear and open connection to the surrounds that emblematises the core philosophies of the studio.

Nestled in amongst existing landscape and additional plantings that have added to a feeling of escape, Lockyer Residence is located in Bardon, Queensland, and has become a labour of love for its owner. Home to architect Shaun Lockyer, the personal nature of the work ensured the project took a slightly different path. The home is re-sculpted through multiple iterations and additions over a lengthened period, ensuring each piece of the puzzle fit perfectly with both how Shaun and his family wanted to live and reflected lessons learnt in practice along the way. Combining the exiting 1950s post-war elements of the original home into an expanded and family-oriented series of spaces, additions and insertions both connect to the old and draw focus on crafted elements as a core identifier that binds both the old and new.

Nestled in amongst existing landscape and additional plantings that have added to a feeling of escape, Lockyer Residence is located in Bardon, Queensland, and has become a labour of love for its owner.

Having been built over a number of years, a team of builders also contributed to the collective whole. As a combined effort, Lockyer Residence was built by Bruce Wales, CGH Constructions and Black Developments, each adding to the next chapter while also referencing the last. The original heritage home feels almost buried and, in a way, protected amongst the new, where openings beyond the bounding walls allow visual and ventilated access to the landscape and natural elements. As a conversation with its context and the typical Queenslander style, the additions combine both a connection to the home’s past and a known lightness of the vernacular style of the area, while modernist references result in a home that fuses both styles from various eras and of time itself.

There is a clear and genuine warmth felt throughout, both in the use of materiality and the intimacy of the home itself. Timber is used extensively, while also being balanced by a foundation of white plaster walls and open glazing to reinforce an openness. As a contemporary family home, creating areas to convene and connect was important. Allowing the family to grow over time and respond to their evolving needs, the resulting home is reflective of how life has changed over the past 18 years since the project began.

There is a clear and genuine warmth felt throughout, both in the use of materiality and the intimacy of the home itself.

Lockyer Residence sees Shaun Lockyer Architects focus on clarity and a coherent flow throughout the home. Consequently, each gesture feels like a deliberate extension of the one before, grounding the home to its site.