Studio Bright's Hedge and Arbour House reframes suburban living, blending Australian architecture and landscape into a layered, low-impact dialogue with Melbourne’s bushland edge.
The project occupies a suburban plot that paradoxically opens toward a stretch of native bushland, pushing the brief beyond the typical aspirations of residential architecture. Here, the threshold between suburb and wild becomes the core conceptual engine—rendered not as a clash, but a carefully choreographed reconciliation.
The house itself is arranged as a quiet procession of architectural and horticultural layers: from the sculptural front hedge acting as a vegetal façade, to a walled garden, and then the arbour—a skeletal screen softened by climbing vines. These elements don’t merely articulate spatial boundaries, they function as climatic mediators and narrative devices. The structure slips into the terrain rather than asserting itself over it, draping down the site’s western fall in a gesture of deference.
Interiors favour restraint and fluidity, designed for thermal performance and social adaptability. Children’s bedrooms open onto a shared corridor that doubles as a communal bench and study, encouraging movement and interaction beyond the traditional boundaries of private space. Living areas, nestled between twin courtyards, become nodes of calm, surrounded by native flora curated in collaboration with Bush Projects. The result is a home that feels at once secluded and expansive, deeply attuned to its ecology.
Most striking, perhaps, is the architectural humility: a rejection of dominant gestures in favour of porous thresholds and tactile nuance.
