Cut Above

When Hobart-based architect Nathan Crump of Room 11 designed the first home for himself and his wife, Calli, it was a chance to experiment. The couple loved it and didn’t intend selling, but when someone came along and made them an offer, it presented another opportunity to play with ideas.

The timing was right for them as well. Calli was pregnant and the move would allow them to pay off their mortgage, so she could then spend the first year at home with their baby.

“This lot came up through a friend and we designed the house quite quickly,” Crump says. “Our son Jack was born in November 2010. We started excavating on January 2011, when he was three months old.”

As he had done previously, Crump designed a house sensitive to the environment. It is a timber house clad mainly in short lengths of “celery top” wood, which would otherwise be burnt. It is compact in size, fine-tuned to moderate the chill Tasmanian climate and has a minimal impact on its bush site.

“We only cleared about two trees,” he says. “We built all the scaffolding around the peppermint gums and set the house on eight pier holes. We made minimal disturbance to the site and used minimal concrete.”

Standing at the top of the steeply sloping site overlooking Hobart, Crump explains how their earlier home, also on a sloping site, was accessed by about 50 steps, the one aspect Calli was happy to change.

“She wanted to be able to park outside and come in on one level,” Crump says. To achieve this he introduced gabion walls of local bluestone, as a retaining structure, and then a concrete driveway into an open carport, which is in turn linked to the house by a bridge.

Crump says they spent a week excavating the site and found a lot of rocks, which they used to make a terrace underneath the house. The plan is that this flat area of land will be a future play space for their son Jack.

In the tradition of the fifties Modernists, the carport is designed as another useable outdoor area. It also provides space for storage and Crump says, very soon, the roof will have solar cells.

Walking across the bridge into the house, we are struck by a flood of northern light. The house has a long linear plan, with all the rooms opening onto an oxygen-charged view down over Hobart toward the harbour.

In the centre of the house is what the couple call the “courtyard deck”. It is a covered deck protected from potential rough weather by sliding timber screens on its northern edge. It is lined in celery top timber, so has a cosy aesthetic warmth. It is literally warm too, a sun trap, and shares a double-sided fireplace with the main living room to the west.

“The screens slide the whole [length of the house] so this can really shut down,” Crump explains.

“In winter, we light a fire [and] the play of light is like filigree. We have put bees oil on the timber slats, so it smells good too.”

In the centre of the space is a lone tree. It is a tradition of Room 11 architects. “We often design a happy spot for a tree,” Crump says. “We use it as a seasonal clock, so it reminds the user of the time of year.”

Being deciduous, the tree lets in winter sun. This is important because this charming central deck is critical to making the house work for the family. It gives them one outdoor space they can retreat to when the prevailing winds, particularly the icy winter winds, are blowing.

“Our idea of something green is something compact,” Crump muses. ”[We like] to keep it simple, but with a couple of good ideas. So here, the focal point is this courtyard, which is like a cut-out.” The cut-out is typical of the architectural language Crump uses in his buildings.

“We usually approach our architecture as a simple volume and scoop pieces out rather than add on,” he says. Where he has scooped out space from the building, the material usually reflects that. Just as the inside flesh of a fruit like a pineapple differs from its outer skin, here the interior of the deck is lined in timber, while the exterior of the building is clad in gunmetal grey fibre cement.

“Where we have scooped out, the material changes. That is why here it is all timber and outside is all black, like a protective hard shell.” In practical terms too, the timber is a favourite material. It is easily accessible and affordable, and surprisingly suitable to the local climate.

“We are pretty strong on lightweight timber houses because they are so responsive to heat and cool,” he says. “On a cool day, if I open the windows it cools down. If we light the fire, it heats up really quickly.”

It is understandable that the house might heat up easily anyway; almost its entire northern façade is glass, with a perfect orientation just east of north. The living room has access to afternoon sun as well, via a western deck, which serves as an outdoor dining and barbecue space.

So within the living space, there are many options for relaxing. There is the galley kitchen and island bench to the south; a dining table overlooking the amazing view; and a sitting area huddled around the fire, still stacked with the wood of the two trees cleared during building.

The hallway leading down to the two bedrooms, is similarly modest in dimension but multifunctional. Crump has designed it to incorporate a home office and library – in the process of being built with plywood shelving recycled from a local bookshop – and a reading or television nook.

“So this will be a television snug,” he says stopping in the Tardis- like space. “A spot for me to watch the cartoons while Jack watches the news.”

Throughout the house, Crump has designed thoughtful elements for Jack. At the eastern end of the home, the deck has an outdoor shower (and curiously a privacy screen made of the timber on which the celery top was transported). It is a spot where they wash the dog, but Crump says it is really Jack’s domain. “It is like his own little water park,” he says.

In the future too, there is the lower terrace for potential play space, plus Crump has designed an addition to slot in an entire new level under the existing house, with space set aside for stairs to be built down to it. That is if the couple can balance their confessed love for their new mountain home with wanderlust to start his experimenting all over again.