An Inward Quietening – Riverview House by JDS Studio Architects

Deliberately removed from the streetscape, Riverview House emerges as its own private escape, calmly opening to a secluded landscape. JDA Studio Architects chooses to embrace the landlocked nature of the site, turning the focus inward to create a home of recharge and retreat.

Located in its namesake of Riverview, the resulting home navigates its relatively small site by turning the focus inward and creating a series of private spaces. Despite the challenges of site limitations, Riverview House combines an efficiency in planning with an openness to the surrounds. The connection to the outdoors is then emphasised through the extensive and measured introduction of glazing elements and access to natural light. In creating a cocooning type of formation, the outer edges of the project create a protective outer shell, allowing for the interior to feel even more private yet still open. JDA Studio Architects combines a restrained and contemporary approach to ensure continued relevance of the home is achieved.

By reducing superfluous elements, the home becomes compact and crisp in its formation.

Riverview House engages the entirety of its site; with an overall vision for the project not to be confined by its built edges, the home is a capture of both its solid and organic elements, acknowledging its contribution to a greater whole. Due to the size of the site, a tightly woven floor plan ensures every introduced component has meaning, with inbuilt flexibility to allow for fluctuations in use over time. By reducing superfluous elements, the home becomes compact and crisp in its formation.

To the rear, a curated landscape setting includes key outdoor areas and a pool as focal points for social interaction. The openness provides a sense of relief, seeing these outdoor areas afforded natural privacy with cleverly placed foliage. Large sliding mechanisms allow the interior to be opened to the outdoors, creating the opportunity for boundaryless indoor-outdoor living. There is a clear focus on modesty in ensuring each element has purpose – the layering of materiality adds texture and depth to the spaces whilst warming and animating the interior.

There is a clear focus on modesty in ensuring each element has purpose – the layering of materiality adds texture and depth to the spaces whilst warming and animating the interior.

Through carefully balancing materiality and indoor-outdoor elements, Riverview House embodies the values integral to contemporary family living. By ensuring each addition with deliberation, JDA Studio Architects optimises Riverview House’s otherwise challenging and restrictive site conditions.