Exploring the Qualities of Concrete – Toorak Residence by Workroom
Conceived as a solid mass from which spaces have been carved out, Workroom’s Toorak Residence is a family home crafted from concrete – the robust nature of the concrete form representing the clients’ brief for an enduring and tactile home.
To be surrounded by such a strong and expressive material as concrete is to have one’s experience of the qualities of the space heightened. Awareness of the construction process is brought to the fore by walls that bear the marks of their making, scale becomes increasingly significant, and light takes on additional meaning.
The Toorak Residence works with this level of heightened emotion and perception to generate a sense of calm, which Workroom Creative Director John Bornas likens to the stillness experienced when entering a church. “It’s almost monastic in a way. Having big thick walls that are very tactile and textural, you can sense their permanence,” he says. “We approached the project trying to create a sense of the home considered as a whole. So it wasn’t about a sum of parts; it was really like we started with a massive block of concrete and we carved out this home.”
This approach was made possible by the clients’ open and explorative brief, he explains. “They weren’t prescriptive in any way; they wanted to work with someone who could provide them with a vision of some sort, whatever that might be.” While there were parameters for what the clients’ family of six wanted the project to achieve, “they didn’t have a prescriptive creative language – they were open to exploration.”
The central focus for the project was to create a home that evoked a sense of permanence, and it was out of this that the decision to construct the building from off-form concrete was made. “It was really embraced by the clients who were very excited about the idea of using predominantly a single material,” John says. With this as the intent, the materials palette was consciously pared back to four main materials – concrete, marble, travertine, and timber.
Against the roughness of the concrete, which was “deliberately kept quite agricultural to reinforce its solidity,” John explains, the stone and timber introduce contrast without adding colour. Within this limited palette, detail emerges in the play on scale. “We varied the scale, we varied the detail throughout to create different feelings in different spaces, but we used the same materials,” John says. “That, for us, was about understanding what the material does and how it works so that we could then exploit those qualities by changing a detail here or adjusting something there.”
The Toorak Residence works with this level of heightened emotion and perception to generate a sense of calm, which Workroom Creative Director John Bornas likens to the stillness experienced when entering a church.
Points of interaction with the building are crafted through the application of the materials, which emphasises an understanding of how the home works on a human level. The texture of travertine floors and timber joinery offers a more refined interpretation of the textural nature of the concrete. Similarly, in the bathrooms, the slabs of marble that line the walls and top the vanities give way to a mosaic application that is inset behind the slab and extends into the shower. “By layering the same material [in different ways], we could give a sense of hierarchy in the spaces,” John says.
Knowledge of the materials was also essential to overcoming the project’s inherent challenges. On a technical level, off-form concrete is challenging, as everything must be perfectly executed the first time – the position of electrical wiring and plumbing must be meticulously planned in advance and great care taken to ensure the integrity of the concrete structure.
Awareness of the construction process is brought to the fore by walls that bear the marks of their making, scale becomes increasingly significant, and light takes on additional meaning.
The acoustics of concrete also needed to be accounted for, says John. “With the fact that everything in the home is made from hard materials, the question is: how do you get it to work in a way that isn’t echoey and uncomfortable?” This was achieved by “varying scales, varying the heights of ceilings to create opportunities for the sound to be attenuated rather than reverberated, so you don’t feel like you’re in an echo chamber,” he explains.
The control of light is also integral to the feeling of the spaces. This is evident from the outset, with the enclosed entry meeting an internal courtyard, which punctures the form that, from the exterior, appears entirely unbroken. The light that penetrates through this courtyard softly illuminates the concrete walls and acts as a pull inward, through the threshold of the immense pivot door into a double-height space adjacent to the courtyard.
Though the communal spaces are oriented to the north, John says that “we’re always trying to create multiple aspects to a home so it’s never just a singular aspect or view, we always have a backdrop of light as well – even if it’s soft southern light.” This means creating opportunities to introduce light from different directions in order to explore varied types of light, which, in turn, makes the space more dynamic, “so you then experience the day in its entirety.”
Here, large spans of full-height glazing pervade diffuse light through semi-translucent curtains, creating a pleasant continuity of light. Other windows, however, control light more tightly, with a smaller aperture introducing a narrower sliver of light that becomes correspondingly more precious and draws attention to the mass of the adjacent concrete.
As a project whose design began from the idea of a single block of concrete, a remarkably sensitive home is crafted within its substantial walls. And, as a building whose spaces are defined by a sense of calm likened to the reverential atmosphere of a church, it is also “an incredibly lived-in family home,” John says. Creating such a degree of domesticity and familiarity, the Toorak Residence explores the potential of its robust material palette and the essential qualities of texture, space and light.