This Suburban Australian Home Isn’t Afraid of a Little (More Like a Lot of) Plywood

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Project Details:

Location: Vasse, Australia

Architect: Josh Duncan Architects / @joshduncanarchitect

Footprint: 1,500 square feet

Builder: Prosser Built

Structural Engineer: Margaret River Structural Engineering

Photographer: Leo Showell / @leoshowell

From the Architect: "Vasse House sits within a suburban residential estate 10 minutes outside of Busselton in Western Australia’s southwest. The surrounding dwellings often cover up to 75 percent of their site area, filling the flat and sandy lots with two-car garages, theaters, primary suites, and al fresco dining areas. The brief for these houses isn’t set by any one family or individual but is determined by a fundamental economic condition: that for most Australians, these suburban houses are their primary asset, and it is critical they retain their value for resale and mortgage equity. Beyond its site, it is from this economic context that Vasse House suggests an alternative.

"Four rooms, two bathrooms, and two nooks symmetrically flank one large room. The house is mostly closed to the south and mostly open to the north, facing a garden across a long, skinny veranda. A detached square double garage is twisted in orientation to align with a skewed northern boundary. The house is oriented due north and setback the minimum permitted distance from the southern boundary.

"A sprawling native garden starts at the curb and makes its way up to the building line, continuing between the two pavilions and linking the public street and private garden with foreign permeability. An enfilade along the southern side of the house provides the internal circulation, efficiently coupled with a service strip accommodating the kitchen bench, utility zone, and extra spaces for storage or study. Each room has a sliding door which opens onto the veranda, allowing the narrow deck to augment the internal circulation.

"With a budget of $260,000 AUD (in 2020), Vasse House is comparable in cost to its volume-built neighbors. Like them, it offers four bedrooms, a two-car garage, and a second living room. It is built with conventional stud walls, sits on the same slab-on-ground, and is topped with the same trussed roof. However, where other houses deliver an inefficient warren of corridor, pushing living and al fresco rooms to the rear no matter the orientation, Vasse House aligns to the north and opens to it, giving each room generous access to light, fresh air, a veranda, and a view of the sprawling garden."