Look at five contemporary houses in Australia and New Zealand that prove there’s big style Down Under.
To reconfigure and extend a late-19th-century home (known as Bellevue Terrace) in the western port city of Fremantle, Australia, the Perth-based studio Philip Stejskal Architecture created this striking geometric annex. Its white-painted-timber-clad frame is punctuated by operable windows and doors that help facilitate airflow and help control interior light levels.
Simple plywood walls and clerestory windows create an open, airy atmosphere.
Cabin 2, an addition to an existing 1960s log house, is the work of Australian firm Maddison Architects. Nestled on a wooded parcel in the bay side town of Blairgowrie (some 65 miles south of Melbourne), the rugged steel-frame house resembles a cave, its walls sloping upward from the ground to form a multi-peaked roof.
Sunlight streams into the two-story interiors via windows of varied sizes and shapes, lending warmth to the concrete flooring, exposed beams, and unstained plywood wall and ceiling panels.
Named the Cross-Stitch House for its timber-beam frame, this Melbourne dwelling by local firm FMD Architects expands on a Victorian home on the lot, providing new spaces for living and dining. Using a simple idea to maximum effect, FMD continued the house’s wood framing to create a courtyard canopy.
