A Japanese-Inspired Home That Experiments with Interior Design, Space and Usability (House Tour)

My name's Chris Gilbert and I was a project lead  for harry house Coburg's in the north of Melbourne   bound by Sydney Road and Lygon Street so  you have lots of amenity around this area   and fantastic access to things like Merry  Creek um great food on Sydney road and it   was only 10 minutes from our studio so it was  really fantastic working in the local context   the site was originally home to a double front  head pre-war weatherboard cottage the client   wished to maintain as much of the warmth of  the entry through that cottage as possible   but really wanted to produce a new lens to this  amazing kind of ram shackle garden that existed   out the back which was a mix of fig trees and  like overgrown kind of multi-generational um   foliage really it was super interesting super  deep but the old house didn't connect with it   at all so the brief was to really reorientate the  living space to create a frame to that lush garden i grew up in country Victoria spending a lot of  my time building cubbies and tree houses in our   small little bush block and there's something kind  of primal and childish about that element of play   that you really want to replicate when you grow  up like you want you want the best parts of that   to come through into your everyday life and we had  a client that was interested in pursuing that as   well so the outcome is something that is quite  unique to the standard kind of Melbourne like   box on the back of a pre-war cottage  you end up with something that's much   more playful much more dynamic it's like  you're living inside a textural object the front part of the house retained the original  cottage and it's not obvious that there's been   a big renovation done when you first arrive the  sight line from the front door takes you straight   through the extension to the garden and the fig  tree and people are immediately drawn to that   i'm Tanya i'm one of the homeowners here  i live with my husband Pete and our three   boys who range in age from 6 up to 16. Harry is  our dog and the house is named after him by our   youngest son who used to ask if we were visiting  the harry house when we were doing site visits the material selection in this building was quite  important we really wanted materials that would   age well be robust and be quite honest like  honest carpentry and you know materials and   textures that had a life and had like errors and  mistakes in them because that that's what kind   of makes the tree house it's not this perfect  polished thing the concrete obviously is never   going to go anywhere but also the INAX board  it's indestructible it's actually fireproof so i've got Japanese heritage the  house has deliberately incorporated   Japanese style design elements archer already  used those in prior projects and it was one of   the things that attracted me to work with them  we have an old mizuya tansu an old Japanese   piece of furniture which is quite large and we  wanted to make sure there was space for that to   be incorporated into the project the challenge  of a long narrow site of course is how to get   light into all rooms of the house so for this  building we kept the original pre-world cottage   and inserted a courtyard between the new  and old building and what this does is allow   natural light straight into the rumpus room and  like deep into it the main kids living space   while also allowing the landscape to wrap all the  way around the building so no matter where you are   in this space you're looking out into the garden  the floor area of this building is quite tight   we're talking just a little a bit over 200 square  meters so in order to get the maximum amount of   amenity within that frame or that envelope  we needed to look for alternate solutions   one of which is providing soft netted areas  in the voids rather than additional rumpus   rooms and what the nets do which is pretty  interesting is allow you to occupy an entire   space without needing furniture so rather than a  room needing to be four by four to have a couch   in the corner you can just have a two and a half  by three meter space and occupy that entire zone   obviously we use a lot of glass in our  projects and in particular this project   and we find it really helps connect the  user with the landscape um ends the sky   like these boxes are pretty unique really you  have the opportunity to see garden and get this   really great sky view factor so the full height  glass really captures both of those elements another very Japanese element was the design  of the bathrooms and that was having a separate   separate spaces for the toilet a  separate space for the basin and   a separate space for bathing which is  how Japanese bathrooms are configured lots of people talk about kitchens  being the heart of the home and   in that respect this project's no different the  step down kitchen is really fantastic because   it allows the person who's using the kitchen  to for their workspace to be at 900 mils   and just perfect for preparing food where  the people on the other side of the bench   space are interacting with an object that's much  more like a piece of furniture at table height the house has been incredible to raise a young  family in i love the light i love being in the   garden seeing the seasons and the weather change  i love relaxing in it the project has exceeded   all my hopes and expectations it's incredible i'm  most proud that tanya's happy with the outcome you   know it's her house that was designed for her  and her family and if she's happy we're happy   you know it's a family house for  living not for filming ironically

Channel: The Local Project

Views: 1,625,419

Rating: 4.9576402 out of 5

Keywords: The Local Project, house tour, japanese house, modern architecture, traditional japanese home, wabi sabi, house tour 2021, interior design ideas, modern interior design, wabi sabi house, melbourne homes, Harry house, Australian architecture, real estate, house walkthrough, japanese inspired house, japanese inspired home, japanese style home, japan architecture house, japan architecture, japanese home tour, Archier, melbourne house tour, australian house design

Id: BJeg2Kta2wY

Length: 7min 32sec (452 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021