Profile: Wolveridge Architects

Wolveridge Architects’ sensitive approach to its residential projects has resulted in a series of elegant and beautifully detailed homes.

Homecomings are often characterized as a return to the safe and familiar but for Melbourne-born architect Jeremy Wolveridge (known as “Jerry” to most), it was quite the opposite. In 2000, after three years’ working in Far North Queensland and two in London, Jerry was ready to set up his own practice. He wanted to do it in a place that would throw up new challenges and provide ongoing opportunity for truly creative design. Track forward to 2014 and his busy Collingwood studio and impressive folio of completed work attest to a decade and a half spent tackling those challenges and grasping those opportunities. Consider the five projects featured here as a representative sample: an inner-city alt-and-add (as you’d expect), homes for a growing family (on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula) and a couple (in an estate adjacent to a golf course), an expansive luxury beach getaway (behind the dunes at Queensland’s Port Douglas), and a converted horse knackery in the Gippsland bush in rural Victoria (really!).

Jeremy Wolveridge, director of Wolveridge Architects.

Jeremy Wolveridge, director of Wolveridge Architects.

Image: Peter Bennetts

Through this diversity a signature style emerges. There’s a feeling of elegance and luxury achieved through attention to detail rather than embellishment; honest textures of timber and concrete predominate but are juxtaposed with marble and porcelain tile and feature mirrored surfaces; and, probably a product of the years spent in Queensland, indoor and outdoor spaces are integrated masterfully.

The most recent project here, the Northcote Residence, exhibits all of these elements. The clients had seen Jerry’s own house, a fantastic timber pavilion in bushland north of Melbourne, and asked if its particular contemporary/rustic materiality could be translated to an inner-urban context – specifically, to replace the dodgy 1970s addition to their block-fronted weatherboard home. The most explicit links to Jerry’s house are the timber exterior and an internal wall clad in recycled timber that marks the transition from the original building, but the two projects are also connected more subtly – fundamentally – through the mix of materials used. In the centre of the raw timber wall, for example, the doorway is given a high-gloss paint finish; and red bricks, salvaged on site, pave a laneway that extends the old house’s central hallway right past a luxe marble-topped kitchen bench. In the bathroom, the same red bricks are played off against a wall of pure white tiles in gloss and matte finishes.

Rusticity in residential architecture too often feels like imitation, but in Jerry’s hands, recycled materials and textured treatments are given a role to play in an unmistakably modern context. At the Northcote Residence, the juxtaposition of honest timber and brick with the unabashed luxury of glossy tiles and polished marble amplifies the effect of each element. So, while this inner-city alt-and-add and Jerry’s rural home are two very different buildings, they share a character and texture that’s distinctly Wolveridge Architects.

The Nak (2004): Existing masonry walls have been retained, with apertures increased to allow more natural light in.

The Nak (2004): Existing masonry walls have been retained, with apertures increased to allow more natural light in.

Image: Albert Comper

If the Northcote extension made good use of materials found on site, the same can also be said for a much earlier project – The Nak, a repurposed equine slaughterhouse. From a utilitarian found object, Jerry and his team crafted an idyllic bush retreat. The existing masonry walls were retained, with apertures increased to bring in more natural light and open up views to the surrounding eucalypt forest, and the building was expanded with the addition of a large silvertop-ash-clad box. Polished floorboards, stained plywood wall cladding and new fittings elevate the interior from vintage industrial to modern residential, and the central gutter in the graded concrete slab of the old knackery is filled in with a new timber tray, leaving a very subtle reminder of the building’s macabre history.

At the other end of the continent – and the other end of the spectrum, in terms of scale – is the Dune House, a luxury home on the beach at Port Douglas. It’s something of a showcase for Jerry’s knowledge of tropical architecture. Indoor and outdoor spaces flow into each other almost seamlessly and the careful programming of rooms, courtyards and gardens creates a network of secluded, private zones and public social spaces. The building expresses a masculine attitude, with heavy masonry walls and deep columns, but this is tempered by the lightness of its gently pitched roof. Detailing doesn’t telegraph luxury through baroque ornamentation but evokes it through meticulous attention to every facet of design, from the elemental black Japanned island bench in the kitchen, to the recessed junctions between walls and ceiling.

Dune House (2010): The lightness of the gently pitched roof tempers the home’s masculine appearance.

Dune House (2010): The lightness of the gently pitched roof tempers the home’s masculine appearance.

Image: Derek Swalwell

Back down in Victoria, the Torquay House explores ideas of luxury, privacy and coastal living in different ways. Set amidst a development on a golf course, the house has been designed to edit out its less desirable outlooks – the neighbouring houses – and instead focus occupants’ attentions on lush fairways and rolling dunes. Despite the imposing concrete panels that block the lateral views, the house is surprisingly transparent: glass walls and wide apertures open up internal sight lines through adjacent rooms, and to the outdoors; roof windows and light wells channel bright natural light; and the battened facade can be opened up, giving the occupants complete control over their level of engagement with the outside world.

Torquay House (2012): The battened facade can be opened up, allowing occupants to control how much they engage with the outside world.

Torquay House (2012): The battened facade can be opened up, allowing occupants to control how much they engage with the outside world.

Image: Derek Swalwell

On the other side of Port Phillip Bay, at Blairgowrie, an extensive renovation of a family home also uses clever facade design to control light and views. With three young kids’ bedrooms facing out to the street from the western facade, mitigation of scorching summer sun was paramount. A geometrical array of windows was designed, with deep trims to shade the interior. The small windows, like square portholes, make for a fun street elevation and, inside, bring a sense of adventure to the kids’ bedrooms. Further into the house, a large north-facing balcony provides a protected outdoor space suitable for use in all seasons and most weather.

Like the Dune House, or the golfer’s paradise at Torquay, there’s a strong sense of openness and permeability here. The view from the kitchen, for example, takes in the balcony and the kids’ rooms in one direction, while in the other, a splashback window frames mature trees on the neighbouring property.

This openness, the elegant minimalism, the specific approach to materiality, flow through all of Wolveridge Architects’ work. These houses are the products of an incredibly considered approach to residential architecture, one that delivers beautiful places for living by the beach, in the city, in the bush, anywhere.

See Jeremy Wolveridge’s material palette from Houses 99.

Source

People

Published online: 11 Nov 2014
Words: Mark Scruby
Images: Albert Comper, Benjamin Hosking, Derek Swalwell, Peter Bennetts

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Houses, August 2014

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