A new Melbourne house draws on the country's brutalist traditions – an architectural history that produced works such as Ken Woolley’s Sirius Building, an apartment block in Sydney; the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney; and Robin Gibson's Queensland Art Gallery. While not strictly following the same school of thought, Hill House nods to the raw surfaces and crisp forms of brutalist architecture; while adding its own contemporary approach and warmth.
Step inside a Melbourne house full of brutalist character
The monolithic family home comprises brick and concrete, designed to accommodate three generations of one family. The project was spearheaded by architecture firm Taylor Knights, who reimagined the idea of suburban living and crafted a house that nestles into the ridgeline in Wheelers Hill.
The multigenerational home had to accommodate the client’s wish for a base to support personal life, professional activity, and evolving family needs. ‘Hill House began with the idea of creating a home for a lifetime; not simply for the clients as they are today, but one capable of evolving with three generations of their family over many years,’ co-founder Peter Knights tells Wallpaper*.
‘The brief was unusually broad: family life, work, entertaining, wellness centre, sports facilities including a soccer pitch, pickleball court, and moments of solitude all needed to coexist within a single home and garden. Rather than treating these as separate functions, we became interested in how architecture could bring them together while still allowing each person their own sense of retreat.’
Knights explains that the site became fundamental to this idea, prompting them to create a home stepped with the terrain rather than sitting upon it. He continues, ‘From this emerged the central atrium: a vertical garden and light-filled void around which the different parts of the house are organised. In many ways, the house became less about designing individual rooms and more about creating a framework for family life to unfold and change over time.’
This atrium was central to accommodating the expansive brief. From this space, visitors can head towards welllness toward wellness, entertaining, and extended family and friends; up and left toward communal life; or upward again or right toward the more private family and working spaces. ‘The architecture is large, but we never wanted the experience of it to feel overwhelming,’ he says.
Hill House was designed to offer two different experiences. When approaching from the street, visitors find the house is, as Knights describes, ‘deliberately grounded and monolithic’. Relatively little is revealed about what lies behind the brickwork façade.
Upon entering the house, the solidity of the exterior gives way to a soft core. A bridge suspended above a sunken garden leads to an atrium, filtering in natural light. Knights concludes, ‘We wanted visitors to feel grounded and calm, but also curious, to have the sense that there is always another layer of the house to discover. That contrast is important to us: a house that feels protective from the outside, but generous and open from within’.
