EA House
EA House is a family home carefully crafted onto a sensitive rock cliff-face escarpment in the Southern Highlands.
A simple elemental gesture testing emotional responses on a difficult and unique site. An experimental house, while simple in form, it solves many overlapping constraints and challenges that exist because of the site. A leftover parcel of land from a suburb that was planned before realising there was a giant cliff and gorge. Since being deemed unbuildable, the site had been empty ever since.
The house balances the conceptual ideas of being both a lookout tower and blending into its natural environment. It touches its site purposefully but carefully so as to have no impact on any existing flora and fauna, utilising the natural topography to its advantage.
Grounding heavily, but minimally, with a small 120 m² footprint designed to emerge from the rock. A bridge provides both equitable access and the conduit for all services to and from the building, resulting in minimal impact on the rock escarpment and existing trees.
Planning is pared back. Public and private are opposite to what is typically expected, with the living spaces at the lower levels having a closer connection to the site. All spaces are connected by a single-loaded corridor idea expanding over two levels, which slowly reveals the spatial play of the plan and the site to inhabitants. Stripped of excess, yet rich in sensory and spatial experience.
Private and transitional spaces are monastic in concept, similar to La Tourette. Humbly sized, with controlled light and views, they create intimate and reflective living. This is contrasted by the lower-level open-plan living, dining, and kitchen spaces with larger curated views. Each element is conceived as a piece of furniture, arranged in and breaking up the space.
A singular materiality cocoons you and connects to this wider site, which feels both dramatic and nourishing at the same time. The varied openings offer many different perspectives of the shared outlook.
The house manages many overlapping technical constraints. Its Flame Zone bushfire rating, ecological constraints, energy requirements, geotechnical constraints, and access are resolved effortlessly. We didn’t have the grace of an unseen elevation; even the roof is visible. The house’s ancillaries and services became an integral part of the design and sculptural proposition.
Its materiality is fire-resistant and maintenance-free and recedes into the context. There’s no preparation work in case of evacuation, and it provides excellent internal thermal stability. Combined with significant levels of additional insulation and FZ glazing, the house performs at a very high level passively.
This house experiments with a new way of living in the landscape canopy. Its simple elemental gesture conceals the technical challenges of the project, offering a model for housing in a challenging environment.
