Detail Architecture + Planning

Detail will be closed for the rest of 2010 while I take some overdue long service leave.

Time for a decent break to freshen up.

Currently I am planning reactivate Detail in March 2011.

Residential architecture design is one of the most demanding areas of architecture. And essentially satisfying.

Everything about it is personal. For many clients its one of those crucial occasions when they fundamentally take stock of their lives and work out what they are really aiming at in their personal lives. How many children, how they would like to live, what are their long term housing needs.

+ Getting the work is the start. To some degree this has been the easiest bit although the early years were tough, at least until there were a number of built works that proved the claims of the level of architectural skill could be substantiated.

+ There’s a high level of architectural judgement required in mediating the ideals and aspirations of the clients with the real life budgets and other constraints. And there are plenty of constraints: budget, site size, slope and orientation, neighbours, neighbouring building and private open space context, heritage, planning regulations, building regulations, easements and covenants, existing building being retained etc.

+ There’s the design process of creating something out of a huge list of usually conflicting practical requirements where the clients themselves are not always in agreement as to how they would like to live.

+ In the inner city there is the task of arguing for planning approval with the local authority, often with inexperienced planning officers who are often uncertain about the complex raft of policies they are supposed to be administering. Council Heritage advisors, who can be considerably more experienced, often work to another agenda. Detail has had considerable success in getting submitted plans approved with minimal changes but the level of uncertainty and time delays are frustrating for clients and for business workflow as well. The skill and energy required to argue that the proposed design complies with the planning scheme is the toughest demand on the architect in my view.

+ Finding reliable builders interested in even pricing a job has been difficult in a time of unprecedented demand on skilled builders. Registration and insurance requirements has made it difficult for new builders to enter the industry and consumer expectations have risen sharply, sometimes beyond what is reasonable to deliver.

+ The receipt of builder’s pricing in a period of high building industry inflation has sometimes resulted in the necessity to prune a design. With planning delays there can be 2 years between the initial design meeting and the signing of a contract. Prices, particularly for subcontractors and materials, can have escalated considerably in that time.

+ Administering a contract between the builder and client during the construction period is the other major demand on any housing project. There’s large amounts of money at stake. People can make mistakes. Renovating can bring surprises: termites, soil conditions, substandard underlying structure.

+ The time taken to run domestic projects from start to finish in the inner city has few parallels in other professions. One Detail job was initiated in November 2002 and concluded in September 2008. Another has run from June 2004 and will be finished for Christmas this year. Even simple jobs can take 2 years to complete, primarily due to regulatory requirements and the general inertia of the industry. Typically there are weekly site meetings for quality control and to resolve any issues and daily phone calls for much of the period.

Many house sites in the City of Melbourne, and other inner city municipalities, are narrow and the rear areas of the houses were not well planned by today’s standards. There is great potential for maximising light and space to the living areas by reconfiguring the rear rooms and in the process giving better access to the rear garden.

This house renovation in East Melbourne involves the creation of a new studio and bathroom at roof level and excavation for a storage basement. The remaining house is being fully renovated with a new kitchen and bathroom. The original toilet and laundry have been relocated to expand the new kitchen and meals area and give direct access to the courtyard.

The outdoor courtyard is being landscaped with a design by Harriette Conway of Patio Landscape Architecture & Design.

Here are a few pictures to show the transformation of the house. More will be added as the building progresses. Click on each image for a larger picture.

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The setting is a heritage listed garden on a 7200m2 site. The mature exotic trees include Deodar cedars, Japanese maples, a liquid amber and a Japanese Zelkova, most about 100 years old.

The house was built as a doctor’s surgery and residence in about 1895 with major additions in 1925 and 1965. Little had been done to the building, or the garden, since then. It had five main entrances and a rabbit warren of rooms and corridors internally. The bathrooms and laundry had not been renovated and the kitchen was split between 2 rooms. There was no flat area of open space adjacent to the living areas. And, in the short term, no heating or insulation.

The task was to transform the former surgery into a family residence. Some of the aspects of the transformation include:

. the waiting room addition was demolished allowing for the restoration of the pre 1965 street front facade

. a main bedroom suite with a sitting area, a generous ensuite and a walk in wardrobe

. 3 additional generous sized bedrooms

. two informal family rooms: one for children and one for parents. The formal living room remains.

. good access from the kitchen and family room to the exterior spaces

. a kitchen centrally located in the house and configured to have generous bench space and storage with an adjacent walk in pantry. The kitchen receives direct morning light from the east and diffuse afternoon light.

. an informal meals area near the kitchen and a separate formal dining room

. a laundry with large storage cabinets

. generous storage in the bedrooms and throughout the house

. the western verandah extended to protect the house from afternoon summer sunlight

The garden area has had an arboricultural assessment and landscape strategy developed by James Martens-Mullaly of Tree Logic Pty Ltd. This gave clear guidelines for the rejuvenation of the heritage parts of the garden. Some large native Australian trees with no heritage significance were allowed to be removed at the rear of the property.

Using this report landscape designer Prue Metcalfe used her skills to develop “a comprehensive planting design … incorporating many significant and heritage trees into a lush, private and tranquil garden that reflects the heritage and history of the residence and existing gardens, giving it the appearance that it has always been there.” Her design also incorporated:

. a wider loop driveway

. conversion of some existing driveway to garden area

. full onsite turning of vehicles

. commencement of the landscape development plan

The council planning permit process took 11 months: there was an extensive report from the council heritage consultants, our detailed response, two onsite meetings with ten people standing around and one with both the Director and Manager of Planning at the council. Much of the discussion revolved around whether we could move the main entrance of the house to the facade facing the street and whether we could demolish parts of the 1920s addition that were not able to be seen from the street. Eventually our arguments prevailed and a permit was issued with no significant changes to the design originally submitted.

Here are 10 photos to show the context before construction began. Click on each thumbnail to get a larger image.

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Here are some photos showing the construction process of the house. The garden is going to take longer to be fully established.

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