The gate yawns open, followed by the crunching of gravel. A wall runs towards the house like an encrusted rock shelf, bursting with tendrils of ivy and tongues of Aspidistra. This wall has an other-worldly feel – part mineral, part vegetable. The garden is large and dark: a massive bunya-bunya, a dowager of a magnolia, the translucent green of a camphor laurel, curly palms and more grow there. Somewhere in the midst of the verdure is a hidden fountain. Yellow clivias, blue ginger, silver ferns and Ardisia cover this dark floor. Your eye flirts with the richness and the fecundity. But the garden affects all senses.
Then the house reveals itself. A High Victorian mansion thought to be the work of architect Ferdinand Reuss. At the door, an ageing bronzed bough of the bull bay is pinned to the wall like a brooch. Everything seems alive and mysterious. Light floods down the hall from within and through the open door to pierce the garden shadows. This is a visitation of another sort with the owner, architect Jim Koopman of Allen Jack+Cottier Architects, and long-time collaborator, landscape architect Vladimir (Tom) Sitta. As they chatter merrily about a project that is still in progress, there is a sense that this has been an iterative, cumulative process and the slow realization has elicited something rare and extraordinary.
From the start, the project speaks of thresholds: of changing spatial volumes, of states of consciousness, of inside and outside, of old and new. There is a sense of layering or sedimentation, as Jim calls it. The residuum of life, of actions taken, dreams realized, possibilities waiting. There has been a wondrous reckoning. The garden was run-down and the house darkened by unfavourable additions when the team was drawn together.
First came a pool in the sunny northern garden, hidden from the house by a long timber cloister and rambling wisteria. Brick walls of old buildings form the limits of the garden and within this frame a dark polished concrete pool rests. This vessel mirrors the void of old stables. A door, recovered from the disarray, is added to the wall and given an absurd twist. A moat filled with rushes edges the pool, adding to the sense of ambiguity and mystery. Where is terra firma? This constant reframing intensifies the experience.
A vitrine holding a monstrous fish skeleton bounds the moat. A fetish, or an allusion to the garden’s past life as a private zoo in the years between the wars? Boston ivy scrambles over the wall. Pyrostegia cascades like Rapunzel’s locks. Old convict bricks have been concentrated under the cloister, the arcing ceiling reflected in the loose composition of a cluster of palms. Salvaged timber ladders form a deconstructed fence that screens a car, while an open lawn fuses this quadrangle. There is an easy, artful relationship between eclectic elements.
A series of modest but transformative additions to the rear of the house followed: a dining room at ground level, a bedroom and ensuite above. In the process the low verandah that darkened and introverted the space was stripped away and a glass loggia gently slung above, imperceptibly linking the second-storey addition and the perimeter row of tall cypresses. In this single move the scale and grandeur of the house were reclaimed, permitting light deep into the house and unblinkered views of the garden.
The new bedroom is wrapped in copper and is distinct from the older house. Windows peel away; the lemon scent of cypress wafts in. Below, the dining room opens to the invisible loggia and garden. A double-height mesh curtain skirts the facade, shading the house, closing in the bedroom and giving the loggia a mesmerizing sense of theatre.
The new additions respect the old. Points of change are direct and, Jim claims, reversible, with the consequent patching adding to the patina and story of the house. Sitting under the loggia with the sky above, surrounded by the stretched volumes of architecture and cypress, the atmosphere is sublime. The garden beckons.
Floating like a strange archipelago beside the house is a baroque Ryoan-ji, island rockeries of faux concrete from the garden’s past incarnation. Ferns and rock orchids, unusual philodendrons and Spanish moss drip from the crevices of these sculptures. Many plants were found and propagated by Tom. A wisteria arbour re-emerges mysteriously supported, while along the boundary a copper pipe unravels in joyous curls to mist and sustain these lithophytes. A cypress halved in a violent storm has left a tall leafless trunk next to the house and Tom leapt at the chance to craft a bird’s nest on top of this struck fragment. The prosthetic nest offers new life.
Sometimes the stars align and a rare property falls into the hands of someone who can see the possibilities and draw together the right talent. This trio cleverly worked between edition and invention, clearly enchanted with the traces and accretions of other lives.
Products and materials
- Roofing
- Palmers Glass clear toughened laminated glass; Fethers stainless steel spider fittings.
- External and internal walls
- Architectural Roofing and Wall Cladding standing seam copper cladding.
- Windows and doors
- Stockwell Joinery rosewood frames; Viridian glazing.
- Flooring
- Ironwood recycled spotted gum with tung oil finish.
- Lighting
- Special Lights Cornet Grande.
- Bathroom
- Palmers Glass shower screens; Aeria Tiles vanity basin.
- External elements
- Ironwood spotted gum decking; Sandstone Roughbacks stone paving; Neil Beecroft Constructions swimming pool; Belzebu cast iron wisteria tendrils; Anping Wire Mesh Factory stainless steel wire cloth curtain.
- Other
- Metal Constructions galvanized structural steel, finished in Porter’s Paint Liquid Iron and Instant Rust.
Credits
- Project
- Garden of Ghosts
- Landscape architect
- Terragram
Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Project Team
- Vladimir Sitta, Robert Faber, Jim Koopman, Belinda Koopman, Kate Mountstephens
- Architect
- Allen Jack + Cottier Architects
Chippendale, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Consultants
-
Blacksmith
Belzebu
Builder Robert Laycock Constructions
Building surveyor Peter Boyce and Associates
Electrical consultant SMB Electrical
Landscape contractor Above the Earth, Bates Landscape Services
Pool contractor Neil Beecroft Constructions
Structural consultant Law and Dawson
Sustainability Aminga Holdings
- Site Details
-
Location
Sydney,
NSW,
Australia
Site type Suburban
- Project Details
-
Status
Built
Website http://terragram.com.au/Garden-of-Ghosts/
Category Landscape / urban, Residential
Type Alts and adds, Outdoor / gardens
Source
Project
Published online: 15 Mar 2012
Words:
Sue Barnsley
Images:
Sharrin Rees
Issue
Houses, December 2011