A Sweeping Concrete Sculpture – Twig House by Leeton Pointon and Allison Pye Interiors
Imagined as an interactive sculpture, Twig House aims to combine landscape, architecture and interiors through bold and sweeping concrete forms and a unique engagement with nature. Leeton Pointon together with Allison Pye Interiors conjure a home that takes on a holistic spirit, bringing a sense of flow between light, space and form.
Located in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, Twig House explores the idea of the home as a living sculptural form. Conceived as a formal expression that connects the built with the natural, the resulting home fuses bold curved concrete forms with generous floor-to-ceiling glazing to create interesting and curated connections between the interiors, landscape and architectural elements. Leeton Pointon and Allison Pye Interiors foster an approach built on an ease of flow that encourages movement, while also emphasising an absence of decorative or excessive ornamentation. Instead, nuanced textures create their own narrative around materiality, form and the void between.
Acting as the defining spine of the home, a pair of tower elements that connect the levels become the centrepiece around which all other zones pivot, offering a sense of the monumental. While offering a sculptural centrepiece, the use of curved concrete forms also references a robust endurance, anchoring the home, that will age with interaction over time. Revealing only a part of itself at any one time, the home as a whole is approached like archaeological layers and the uncovering of sediment and stratum. This play on concealing and revealing allows the spaces to become a journey of sorts, as inhabitants embark on their own adventure. The contrast between the smooth and curved elements with the tactile and rough further offers a sensory quality to being within and moving through the spaces.
Close collaboration and open dialogue enabled a free flow of ideology and refined detailing across all phases early on, ensuring the early integration and commissioning of custom approaches to services, sustainability, landscape and artwork. The resulting home responds to its orientation, with concealed shading devices, deliberate access to natural ventilation, and increased thermal mass that allows for passive comfort and the avoidance of solar heat gain. A simplified palette of rough and polished concrete, glass and oak reinforce a connection to the home as a non-traditional residence, and its deliberate lack of decorative elements allows the furniture and artwork to grace the floors of the home like artwork fills a gallery space, offering moments of contemplation in between. Key connections to the outdoors were also integral to the home, ensuring a feeling of existing in a sculpture immersed within the landscape.
Twig House thoughtfully reconsiders the home as a gesture of interest and craft. Leeton Pointon and Allison Pye Interiors have conjured a series of spaces that challenge the typical and expected approach, creating a unique place of balance, privacy and discovery in the process.
Key connections to the outdoors were also integral to the home, ensuring a feeling of existing in a sculpture immersed within the landscape.
Conceived as a formal expression that connects the built with the natural, the resulting home fuses bold curved concrete forms with generous floor to ceiling glazing to create interesting and curated connections between the interiors, landscape and architectural elements.
