 | SUBURBAN CURIOSITY Supple Design’s Sales and Information Suites for Stockland
give house buyers a chance to experience alternative spatial
and material possibilities in an accessible and easy context.
PHOTOGRAPHY Shannon Mcgrath, Ian Tatton
REVIEW Helen Norrie
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The robust
and demountable
Stockland Sales and
Information Suite
at Mernda, with the
residential subdivision
beyond.
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Mernda Sales
and Information Suite.
Timber and concrete
are used in a “play of
opposites” to create a
carefully detailed and
proportioned building.
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The zigzag walls
create alcoves and
the overhanging roof
provides shelter to
these pockets.
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The interior space
of the display suite at
Mernda.
Photographs
Shannon McGrath.
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The Macarthur
Gardens display suite
differs slightly from
the building at Mernda.
Although similar
building techniques are
used, the orientation,
insulation and concrete
aggregate respond to
the local environment.
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An interior view
of the building at
Macarthur Gardens.
Photographs
Ian Tatton.
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In the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne,
the wide brown land of the Great Australian Dream,
speculative houses take over farmland like wild gorse
in a sheep paddock as potential home-owners are forced
further out of the cities in a quest to fulfil their real
estate desires. Buying a family home for $300,000 is an
ancient yearning in the metropolitan centres, but it
remains a possibility in the outlying satellite suburbs.
These estates or “villages” offer a mix of housing types,
with a range of detached or semidetached dwellings of
various sizes and mostly sensible plans, but the gamut of
formal expression ranges from mock Federation to mock
Neo-Modern. “Architecture” is reduced to a selection of
emblematic motifs as preoccupations with space, form
and order are eschewed in favour of a misinterpretation
of “architectural style”.
In this field of quasi-utopian dreams, Australia’s
largest residential developer, Stockland, has recently
sown a few seeds that may create a little crosspollination
between the ideals of contemporary architecture and
the aspirations of the suburbs. As part of an agenda
to engage more critically with architectural design
issues, Stockland established its national Design House
in 2003. This specialist design unit is charged with
informing Stockland of “the latest, most innovative
ideas” and transferring these lessons to its building and
development projects. The results can be seen in recent
projects within the nascent subdivisions of Macarthur
Gardens on Sydney’s south-western outskirts, and
Mernda on Melbourne’s north-eastern periphery.
The houses here conform to type, but Stockland has
focused unusual attention on the pavilions in which the
real estate deals are negotiated. Sales and information
suites are traditionally housed in a model home on site,
or, alternatively, in lightweight prefabricated structures,
which are low in both cost and architectural aspiration.
Things are different at Mernda and Macarthur Gardens.
Inspired by the concrete House of the Future of 2005,
Stockland was interested in how a prefabricated concrete
system could produce a robust, demountable building,
while also providing a more ambitious “architectural
aesthetic”. This could differentiate the company by
offering an association with contemporary architectural
design, and by allowing visitors to experience alternative
building types without the expectation that they
would commit to these less familiar formal and stylistic
characteristics in their own home.
Supple Design was commissioned to develop
the system, and director Eoghan Lewis drew on his
fascination with Jørn Utzon – in particular an unbuilt
project developed for a site in Bayview in Sydney,
designed in the 1960s. Utzon’s proposal was twofold:
a spatial and organizational separation of the house
into discrete elements, and an inventive structure
of metal-clad plywood beams. The Sales and Information
Suites adopt this logic both spatially and structurally,
embracing Utzon’s belief that “structure and architecture
are the same thing”.
The concrete construction system employs three
standard forms, from which all the panels are made. The
floor and roof are made from the same 2140 x 400 mm
beam and the wall panels are produced through a system
of shuttering and adding foam inserts into a further two
flat panel moulds. Conduits and pipes are accommodated
within these forms. Sets of the inverted U-shaped panels
join to form the floor, supported on a pair of steel beams,
with a second set of upright U-channels forming the
roof. The flat wall panels separate these two planes,
with plywood or glazed infill panels completing the
enclosure. The building is demountable, and is designed
to be re-erected on future sites. It is envisaged that the
concrete elements would be unbolted and reused, while
the plywood infill elements may be sacrificial.
The resulting building is very particularly
proportioned and detailed. It is also spatially responsive
to the site, with full-height glazing to the northern and
southern ends. Along the east/west edges the zigzag side
walls of alternating panels of concrete and operable
glass create a series of alcoves in a broader perimeter
zone. This reduces the sun penetration into the main
space, and, along with the overhanging roof, creates
pocketed elevations that are sheltered from the summer
sun. Two pavilions of differing scales help to articulate
the overall form. This pair provides a “play of opposites” – concrete/timber, gallery/home, formal/personal
– and imitates Utzon’s idea of separate buildings that
“enhance the quality of the landscape”.
In many ways these are extraordinarily curious
buildings. While not intentionally designed as a house,
the pavilions are homely and house-like. Despite
the absence of gables and ornament, they provide an
interesting possibility for the direction of suburban
housing. This is more apparent at Macarthur Gardens,
where both the interior fittings and the furnishings are
quite domestic in detail and scale. The proportions of the
major volume, both in plan and section, lend themselves
to adaptation as an open-planned living space. The
second pavilion, with a lower ceiling height, is ideal
for sleeping spaces, with additional utility functions
possibly accommodated in the interconnecting “lean-to”.
By contrast, the interior detailing at Mernda employs
more commercial finishes, masking the domestic
potential of the space.
While establishing an effective scale relationship
with the residential subdivision, the articulated
construction system firmly positions these buildings
within an established architectural lineage. The suites
provide an iconic “architectural front” to the housing estates, a contrast to the marketing hype that elicits
nostalgic associations with the pastoral context (“the
Village is inspired by its past with the use of dry-stone
walls, corrugated iron highlights and agriculture
landscape features”). They provide an opportunity
to introduce buyers to performative spatial aspects
of housing design: alternative construction methods,
relationship to site and orientation, and spatial
articulation and simplicity of planning rather than
a preoccupation with ensuites and ornament.
Like the display homes themselves, the Sales and
Information Suites present a full-size model that allows
visitors to “experience the dwelling”, with the potential
to covertly infiltrate the market. The public deserves
to be introduced to more options for housing and
to understand how these can be appreciated for their
spatial characteristics, rather than being rejected for their
nonconformity to the traditional iconic ideal of what
a house should look like. In the Netherlands properties
are sold without fittings and owners are accustomed to
installing their own kitchens and bathrooms. The house
is a naked shell, and without the glitz of the surface as
a seductive device the buyer must seek to comprehend
the other attributes of the house. Effective floor area,
arrangement of rooms and orientation become key aspects
that need to be understood, rather than style and surface.
Supple Design’s model incorporates this possibility.
The building system capitalizes on industrial techniques
that have not yet been considered for suburban housing.
The superstructure requires only three moulds, which
maximizes the efficiencies afforded by precast concrete
construction methods. The system allows for a variation
of materials for both the external infill and internal
fittings, and this influences the overall aesthetic and cost
of the building. Currently the profile of the U-beam is
sized to accommodate a four-metre cantilever at the ends
of the gutter beam, exceeding the dimension required
for the general six-metre span of the building. Reducing
the length of this cantilever would allow the section
dimension of the beam to be decreased, producing a
finer profile. The orientation, insulation and concrete
aggregate are different in the various locations, and this
could be further adjusted to accommodate specific views
or to address specific briefing requirements. A building
that articulates the superstructure separate from the
infill allows greater flexibility of use and also stylistic
interpretation by the owners who could select different
interior options, depending on their budget.
Meanwhile, it’s refreshing to see that the spirit of
the Great Danish Master has made the journey from
the harbour inland. I wonder if someone will dream of
purchasing one of these buildings as their home. With
some adjustments to the siting and the planning, this
could be a very feasible option, once we overcome the
fixation that a “man” needs a gable to make a home a castle.
Helen Norrie is a lecturer in architecture at the University of Tasmania.
MACARTHUR GARDENS SALES AND INFORMATION SUITE, CAMPBELLTOWN, NSW
Design
Supple Design— Eoghan Lewis with Hugo Moline.
Client
Stockland—Thom Wright.
Builder
Built.
Precast
Innovative Precast Group.
Engineer
HKMA—Phil Mance.
Environmental engineer
Steensen Varming—Chris Arkins.
MERNDA SALES AND INFORMATION SUITE, VIC
Design
Supple Design—Eoghan Lewis.
Client
Stockland—Ben Giles.
Builder
Built.
Engineer
HKMA—Phil Mance.
Environmental engineer
Steensen Varming—Chris Arkins.
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