Park
2023
Traditional lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people
The Park House is a project that SLa has been involved with over a 12-year period, through three separate owners all wanting to take full advantage of the houses enviable park side location in inner-city Brisbane. This most recent design involved a complete renovation, alteration, and extension to fully realise the potential of the home in terms of its accommodation and quality of architectural expression.
The interrelationship of the house to its own landscape and to the adjacent park is a defining characteristic of the home, mediating between the needs of private and more public edges. The house deliberately explores the sense of “compound” as a response to balancing a desired introversion (for privacy and sanctuary) in the broader, more public extroverted environment. The facades of the house respond directly to these varying functional conditions and as such, offer architectural opportunity for formal expression and diversity. Screened facades characterise the western edges, while cascading landscapes perform a similar functional response on the eastern side of the house, where physical connection to the garden is the primary response.
A palette of zinc, concrete, greying timbers, and stone create an aesthetic that is sympathetic to context and allows for graceful aging. The inclusion of highly detailed concrete elements (including the garden pavilion) creates a sense of permanence while also “bookending” the site to reinforce an idea of courtyard and compound. Internally the house enjoys varying volumetric scales, theatrical provision of natural light and a rich, warm, timber shrouded spaces.
Despite its relatively modest size, this home offers a rare and enviable array of spaces, levels of engagement, and opportunities for retreat within an inner-city sanctuary. We are both proud and humbled by our successive clients’ faith in us to realise the full vision of this home and the quality of what has been done here is testament to this support.
Despite its relatively modest size, this home offers a rare and enviable array of spaces, levels of engagement, and opportunities for retreat within an inner-city sanctuary. We are both proud and humbled by the trust successive clients have placed in us to realise the full vision of this home, and the exceptional quality of the finished project stands as a testament to this support.
Shaun Lockyer, Lyle Mitrovich and Kevin Li for SLa
Thallon Mole Group
Westera Partners
Larc Landscape Architecture
Christopher Frederick Jones Photography
