Wattle Avenue House

A suburban house in Mildura becomes a talking point thanks to an intervention by Minifie van Schaik architects.

A waiter bringing the menu to Luciano Pavarotti at a restaurant – so the anecdote goes – was rebuked by the flamboyant tenor, who exclaimed: “A menu! I don’t want a menu: I want food.”

I can imagine a similar conversation between the charismatic de Pieri family in Mildura, north-western Victoria, and a real estate agent keen to show them some prestige landmark property beside the Murray River. “We don’t want a riverside landmark property. We want a house.”

It doesn’t follow, however, that any old house will do, just as Pavarotti wouldn’t have wanted any old food – even if it did start with the principle of good cuisine: a basic ingredient. When designing for the de Pieri family, Jan van Schaik of Minifie van Schaik Architects began with just that: the basic ingredient being an “any old house” with an undistinguished horizontal cream
brick veneer.

The new addition echoes Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel.

The new addition echoes Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel.

Image: Peter Bennetts

The pre-existing house, standing unaffected on its quarter-acre block, was put in the mix like some honest but unprepossessing vegetable – a good spud, already peeled and par-boiled. In short order, the bland brick veneer would get transformed into something exquisite: a culinary and bookish sanctuary for the energetic organizer of the Mildura Writers Festival, Donata Carrazza, her husband, the philosopher-chef Stefano de Pieri and their two gregarious children of university age.

Scorn for the brick veneer was never on Jan’s mind; and something about the bald but friendly blandness must have appealed to the de Pieri family for them to have bought it in the first place. It is, after all, a quintessentially suburban Australian home, an unsung icon of luxury-to-scale, an economical manor on a miniature estate, which few countries in the world have the space to afford for the bulk of people.

Brick-veneer houses have vernacular charm and as much formality or “laid-backness” as you put into them. A brick veneer is familiar to us both as a stuffy, lifeless vitrine containing lace curtains and rococo furniture and also as a run-down joint crowded with dogs, trailers and an engine block standing on bricks on the porch.

Rather than negate this lively inclusiveness, Jan finds a way to heighten its allure. He achieves it by visiting a remarkable contemporary gesture on the southern side, where a garage might normally stand. The exterior has a geometric horn with an echo of Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel, rising proudly in white hexagonal tiles as a portion of an icosahedron.

Pride of place is given to a large kitchen.

Pride of place is given to a large kitchen.

Image: Peter Bennetts

In the internal spaces, the contrast between the original home and the new addition is most clearly played out. Pride of place is given to a large kitchen, which is now the focus of the old structure. The new chapel, as I think of it, contains both spacious and intimate areas devoted to library and music spaces. New and old structures share a courtyard, flanked on the adjacent side by the continuation of the chapel, which turns into a workstation and terminates in the main bedroom.

The kitchen is large enough not to require cupboards over the benchtops, which allows visual flow between the study quarters, cooking spaces and the dining table. The light throughout these spaces is carefully controlled, moving from the brightness of the culinary parts to the light-sheltered recesses of the library, with the glare of Mildura filtered by shaded clerestory windows and an enclosed courtyard.

Very little of the old house had to be changed because most of it was functional and well crafted. It only lacked a relationship with art and culture. Jan has rehabilitated the old house for its practical genius but doesn’t ask it to perform any transcendental functions, which are left to the new monastic parts. His process of redeeming the old house was the opposite of a typical Victorian renovation, where a grave and stately front end typically dissolves in a slick and snazzy extension at the back.

Symbolically, the junction of new and old is set out in the facade, which scans like a visual story. In the abstract language of architecture, it’s like a painting of the Annunciation, where an angel has swooped in from the left to visit the Virgin Mary and bring her the news of new fertility. It seems fitting that this scenario, surrounded by a hedge of olive trees, should present its drama to the street diagonally opposite St Joseph’s College.

New and old structures share a courtyard.

New and old structures share a courtyard.

Image: Peter Bennetts

Although the house doesn’t pretend to be homogeneous – rather, postmodern inclusiveness is triumphant – it has rich continuities among the disparate origins. A neat stylistic protocol draws the otherwise distinctive spaces together. Especially impressive is the way that the spaces wander from the open to the intimate, which makes for a settled mood. It’s a house where you could write a book or invent a dish, a place of generous vistas but also nooks and corners that episodically relate to one another.

On the outside, the property speaks to Mildura in its own language, with its unmistakable brick vernacular. But it also signals another life, full of conversation, contrast and savour, where nothing tasteless would ever be on the menu.

A special Our Houses public talk was held on 25 October 2012 as part of the 2012 Melbourne Architecture Annual themed – community and architecture – with the architect and clients discussing the making of the Wattle Avenue House. Presented by Houses magazine, Our Houses is a series of informal public talks about the creation of domestics spaces.

Products and materials

Roofing
James Hardie fibre cement sheet with clear seal finish; Euroa glazed brick veneer cladding in ‘Vanilla,’ ‘Woodfern,’ ‘Wheat,’ ‘Lime’ and ‘Golden Crown’.
External walls
Feza ceramic tiles from Academy Tiles Windows and doors: York Glass; Custom-designed front door by Minifie van Schaik Architects
Flooring
Forbo Marmoleum Fresco sheet flooring in ‘Green Wellness’; top-surface bluestone aggregate concrete with clear seal finish.
Lighting
Custom-designed internal wall light fittings by Minifie van Schaik Architects; dimmable downlights.
Kitchen
Quarella Quartz Gemme benchtop in ‘Onice’; Novelli Sovereign Deluxe tapware; Dorf Fluid basin spout; APK Engineering stainless steel benchtop.
Bathroom
Novelli Sovereign Deluxe tapware; Dorf basin spouts and bath spout; Reece showerhead; Caroma Pearl toilet; Porcher Studio bidet; Mildura Tile Centre tiles.
Heating and cooling
Jetmaster Universal wood inbuilt heater; Chimieneas and Aussie Heatwave Fireplaces wood-fired oven.
Other
Custom-designed door handle by Pelidesign.

Credits

Project
Wattle Avenue House
Architect
MvS Architects
Melbourne, Vic, Australia
Project Team
Jan van Schaik, Paul Minifie, Jessica In, Clementine Leigh, Gwyllim Jahn
Consultants
Builder Jaag Professional Builders
Building surveyor Regional Building Consultants
Engineer Inland Consultants
Landscaping Viesturs Cielens Design
Site Details
Location Mildura,  Vic,  Australia
Site type Urban
Building area 340 m2
Project Details
Status Built
Design, documentation 3 months
Construction 6 months
Category Residential
Type New houses
Client
Client name de Pieri family

Source

Project

Published online: 4 Jan 2013
Words: Robert Nelson
Images: Peter Bennetts

Issue

Houses, October 2012

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