The house designed by Baracco+Wright with its rounded corners fits into the triangular plan in a very delicate and subtle way, accommodating a new living space for the Rose family.
In this family house the Baracco+Wright Architects negotiate the complex site while hoping to create an enduring building with civic presence, extending the urban form of the historic crescent and also contributing to the typology of wedge shaped buildings on similar sites throughout the inner suburbs of Melbourne. This triangular shaped site also allowed the architects to carry on their exploration of simple geometries.
There are two residences in one volume: a 2 bedroom terrace type house for the adult children and a 3 bedroom + study house for the parents. The program consists of a smaller and larger house. The smaller house is designed using the terrace typology – at just over 5 metres wide and 30 metres long – it continues the street pattern of the side street through its entry, setback and house type. The larger house faces the corner and its entry is literally the corner of the site. The two houses are treated as one form.
The west facade is ‘solid’, punctuated sharply through a few windows, presenting a 'hard' confident mass to the street. This condition disintegrates as the building moves around to its more intimate relationship with the reserve and busy street level (bike and pedestrian path) on the 'softer' east façade, where the materiality is a play of negative space, transparent mesh, pergola frames, reflection of trees in large windows and planting.
The use of a mesh curtain to enclose this space, which can be opened along its entire length, offers a generous sharing of spatial quality with the adjoining public space rather than a hard wall or garage door. This space is used recreationally but can also accommodate car parking.
The use of a planning technique of spatial displacement rather than division, one is in touch with the perimeter as they move around. This technique has been explored in many of Baracco+Wright Architects’ projects as a key planning strategy.
