Naremburn House / Bijl Architecture

Architects: Bijl Architecture
Location: Sydney NSW, Australia
Area: 250.0 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: Katherine Lu

Builder: Stuart Wilson Constructions
Landscape Consultant: Melissa Wilson Landscape Architects
Structural Consultant: Engineering & Design Group Pty Ltd
De Form Wall Design: AR-MA and Bijl Architecture
De Form Wall Fabrication: FCI
Stormwater Engineering: YSCO

From the architect. Our clients came to us with a short list of demands: light-filled spaces, no boring square rooms, no two rooms the same, robust, and a place to ‘live long’. The Naremburn House, located in Sydney, Australia, responds to this brief while negotiating site and planning parameters to create a family home with an emphasis on thoughtful spatial planning and a robust materiality – in underpinned by an ‘intentional irregularity’.

The design manipulates the site topography with subtle level changes while re-interpreting traditional roof forms, such as the Dutch gable and catslide roof, to present a compact streetscape frontage. At the rear, the pool and patio interlock with the internal living spaces via expansive glazing and openings. The material selections – externally, zinc, timber, masonry, concrete; and internally, polished concrete, solid surfaces, framed walls and timber framed fenestration – were selected for durability and capacity to weather and wear.

The volumetric opportunities offered by the roof form are exploited to provide a useful and capacious floor plan layout, accommodating open plan living spaces, bedrooms and study, bathrooms and service spaces, garaging and the internal circulation, which culminates in the central sculptural stair wall and void.

A double height wall beside the central stair void is the site of a unique, integrated Corian sculptural wall installation dubbed the “De-Form Wall”. Bijl Architecture co-designed the wall with AR-MA in an intensive exploration of parametric drawing and scripting, investigating pattern and form by deploying an innovative approach to digital fabrication processes and CNC machining.