The suburban residential neighbourhood of Floreat is about eight kilometres northwest of the Perth’s central business district in Western Australia.
Along with a handful of other residential areas such as City Beach and Dalkeith, Floreat is known as a “garden suburb” because of its abundant trees and sweeping green vistas. Floreat also has an architectural legacy of modernist and brutalist buildings constructed with board-marked off-form concrete. So when Australian architect Neil Cownie designed this 6,000sqft family residence named Roscommon House, he worked to embrace both the green outdoors and the suburb’s architectural personality.
“In keeping with Floreat’s ‘garden suburb’ history, landscaping blurs the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces with pocket courtyards and roof terrace gardens,” explains Neil. “The spatial arrangement of the pocket courtyards is also driven by environmental concerns; the building is teased apart to maximise winter solar penetration and to capture prevailing cooling breezes.”
Since the suburb is already home to a number of outstanding modernist concrete buildings, Neil and the owners decided on grey off-form concrete for the walls and ceilings. “I think that when building, an architect has a responsibility to ensure that their new build will be contributing positively to the community,” he says. “The greater area around Roscommon House has a significant modernist and brutalist architectural history, and concrete was used as a ‘finished’ expressed wall and ceiling finish in many buildings in this locality. The materials we selected for the house were influenced by this.”
Neil’s design incorporates passive heating and cooling measures, and includes a concealed 16.5kw photovoltaic array with 50 panels that enables the house to produce its own energy. While the bulk of the house’s programme is set across a single level, the floor plan also includes a 1,500sqft basement and a small 750sqft first floor with roof gardens.
Within, the indoor and outdoor communal areas are seamlessly integrated. A kitchen is connected to a family room, and both these spaces open up to the outdoors. Around an interior stairwell, Neil created a void with an exposed, sculptural, off-form concrete ceiling that references the nearby Great Lakes – a series of lakes, swamps and wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain that are important to the local Noongar aboriginal people.
For the kitchen’s central island, Neil set a 60mm-thick marble benchtop over a timber cabinet. He concealed services and the acoustic insulation within the timber ceiling, and the refrigerators behind the cabinetry. A small northern courtyard draws in sunlight to insulate the kitchen during the colder months.
A central courtyard connects directly to the kitchen and family room via stacking external glass doors. Once these doors are open, the internal and external spaces become one. From the indoor living areas, the family can look out to this central courtyard that opens to the sky, and in summer, they often enjoy their meals here underneath a honey locust tree that provides dappled shade.
An external staircase to one side of the central courtyard links the ground level garden both visually and physically to the garden of the roof terrace. Neil says, “The garden and pockets of courtyards were ‘carved’ out of the mass of the house to connect the building with its landscape, to provide cross-ventilation in summer and to draw the sun deep into the house to warm the interiors in winter.”
The backyard, where the swimming pool is located, has “floating” roof structures that echo the shadows of the trees. “These shapes are also a nod to Oscar Niemeyer and his contribution to international modernist architecture, which inspired the Western Australian architects responsible for the many modernist buildings constructed through the 1960s and early ’70s in this suburb,” explains Neil.
The master bedroom is located at the top of the interior staircase on the first floor and has its own private roof garden. The children’s bedrooms and activity area are separate from the core of the house, so the kids can make as much noise as they want without disturbing the adults.
To add warmth to the interiors, Neil layered the concrete walls with timber and brass details, and embraced the uneven concrete surfaces in a celebration of Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetics. He chose furniture that would give the house a contemporary rather than mid-century feel, selecting pieces based on their shape and form as well as how comfortable they felt. He custom-designed the indoor and outdoor dining tables, bedside tables, pendant lamps in the stairwell and a rug in the family room, and sourced streamlined, elegant pieces from brands such as Moroso, Punt and Diesel from Foscarini to create an elegant yet relaxed atmosphere. The outdoor areas were furnished with Kettal’s Boma three-seat sofa, Mesh sofa and coffee tables, and Basket Outdoor Club armchair.
“The quality of ‘timelessness’ is something that I strive for in all my design work,” concludes Neil. “I try to avoid trends, and rather look at the lifestyle of my clients and the specificity of each site. This way, the completed building sits comfortably, both for the owners and for the wider community that views it from the outside.”
Photography: Jack Lovel, Robert Frith and Michael Nicholson
