Cloud House

My clients’ challenging brief called for a versatile holiday house to accommodate their large family in a marina side location, an hour’s drive from their suburban homes in the capital city of Perth. The brief requested a design for a holiday house that uniquely contrasted their everyday suburban living.

My client could recognise the importance of the location of this site within the Mandurah Marina, setting the standard for the rest of the Marina front housing as any building on this site becomes an ‘end stop’ to the Marina housing. Open to the Marina to the south, public open space along the long boundary to the west and open also to the street to the north at the rear the site and my clients demanded an iconic building. This same client had previously commissioned Neil for an equally pivotal iconic site for a mixed-use apartment building.

The site is located in the Southwestern corner of Australia within the Aboriginal Noongar Nation, and specifically within the Pinjarup language group of the Noongar people. Central to the creator beliefs of the Noongar people is the Wagyl, a large snake-like creature that was created by the Rainbow Serpent. The Wagyl was tasked to create, then protect, the rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Noongar country aligns closely along the Southwest Indian Ocean drainage region, and the Noongar use of these waters played an important seasonal part in their culture. 

The Darling Range is said to represent the body of the Wagyl, which meandered over the land creating the curves and contours of the hills and gullies, its body scoured out the course of the rivers; where it occasionally stopped for a rest, creating bays, lakes and wetlands.

The Wagyl made its way along the coast before giving birth to its young in the estuary, being the vast waterway of the Peel Inlet, an area of water equivalent to the size of Sydney Harbor. 

This makes the Peel Inlet a place of significance as the Wagyl’s young grew within the waters of the Inlet before leaving to create the surrounding waterways. The site of Cloud House is located adjacent to the Mandurah Channel, being the pivotal point at which the Wagyl came out of the Indian Ocean to create the vast waterways of the Peel Inlet. 

Outlook to the west over the Indian Ocean provides an expansive vista of the vibrant colours that colour the enormous southern skies. On most days the sky is a vivid blue that deepens into striking red and orange sunsets over the adjacent ocean with clouds capturing and transforming the view.

If you have ever experienced launching a boat from a public boat ramp, you will realise that boat ramps are places of high drama and theatre. With a public boat ramp less than 50 meters away, Cloud House itself becomes part of the theatre and drama as it provides an ever-changing backdrop to the drama of the boat launching.

Outlook to the west over the Indian Ocean provides an expansive vista to the often vibrant colours of the enormous southern skies. On most days the sky is a vivid blue that deepens into striking red and orange sunsets over the adjacent ocean with clouds capturing and transforming the view.

As the house is essentially located at sea in reclaimed land, there is no landscape to speak of other than the limestone boulders that form the sea wall to the marina. Outlook from the house takes in the boats of the marina, the Indian Ocean and the western sky.

Estuaries are places, within the coastline, where fresh river water mixes with salt water before finally reaching the sea. They take on a variety of shapes and sizes. The Peel-Harvey is broad and consists of two shallow lagoons, the tidal reaches of three rivers, and a narrow channel to the sea. Today’s estuaries have had a short life. They formed only 6-8,000 years ago, when the rising sea flooded them, and most are now slowly filling with sand and silt from rivers and the sea.

The sea-level 18,000 years ago was about 130 metres lower than it is today. Peel Inlet was a shallow valley across which the Murray River flowed to a channel carved through the sand dunes near Halls Head, then on across a wide coastal plain to the sea. Harvey Estuary was a long valley between the dunes, through which river water flowed to join the Murray. Over the next 12,000 years, the sea-level rose rapidly (in geological time), until sea water had flooded the valleys. The sea-level was then 1-2 metres above its present level and water was spread out over low-lying land and up the rivers, making the estuary even larger than now.

At first, it would have been 7-8 metres deep, but a combination of the small drop in sea level about 4,000 years ago and the build-up of silt has caused the water to shallow to no more than two metres. Immense amounts of sediment have been deposited in it: sand and

silt carried in by the rivers and by the daily influx of sea water, as well as sands blown in from dunes flanking the estuary. All this has combined with decomposing organic matter from plants and animals. (Source: ‘Peel – Harvey. The Decline and Rescue of an Ecosystem’ by Keith Bradby. 1997).

Cloud House model offers a socially efficient and economical alternative for multi-generational living. My client’s family lives in four separate suburban houses, and they all come together to live within the smaller footprint of Cloud House. The family is accommodated in an ‘apartment’ typology, where vertical zoning allows independent living. 

The vertical zoning allows opportunities for spaces to relate between floors, enabling the family to holiday together as one if they so choose. Great Grandparents are accommodated on the ground floor, adult children on the middle level and the Grandparents and their Grandchildren on the top floor.

The house is located in what is often, a very hostile environment. The natural elements of ‘place’ which include prevailing cold winds from the west and southwest, the setting sun to the west, sunrise obscured by adjoining buildings to the east, and views across the ocean and marina from the northwest through to the south east were the starting point for the design of the house. 

The coloured external roller blinds resolve a number of contextual and environmental issues including the buildings conflict of major views to the west, factors of sun and wind and privacy from the adjacent public open space. The buildings appearance changes as blinds open and close, to either appear as a solid object when closed, or to reveal a series of recesses or voids in the façade when a blind is opened.  The changing imagery of blinds reflects the nature of signals being sent by nautical flags of the boats and the sails of the yachts in the marina are referenced through the use of the external roller blinds which take on the same nautical colours. Cloud House also incorporates contemporary connections to place through the colours of nautical navigation; red, green and blue, as found in the colours of the projecting awnings over windows.

The concrete exoskeleton of expressed floor slabs and columns became an honest expression of the buildings structure, where no internal mid-span structural support was required. All internal walls are from timber framed construction, thereby providing an opportunity for future adaptability and a sustainable future for the structural envelope. The roof plan that reflects the past and the present of ‘this place’ through incorporating the slithering curves of the Wagyl and the colourful cloud filled skies.

Internally the fun continues with ceiling profiles that roll like the underside of a cloud, and a ladder leading to the grand-children’s cubby area below the main roof. Timber from the external wall cladding blurs the boundaries as it continues to internal walls.

Details reflect the fluid lines of the Rainbow Serpent, nautical & cloud referencing.

Highlight windows allow morning to mid-day sun to spill through the central void space to counter the fact that the living areas all face south and west to take in the best views.

The exterior of the house was designed for sustained durability in the salt air of the marine environment in which it is located. The exposed concrete frame of the structure is externally infilled with prefinished Equitone compressed sheeting which provides ongoing durability. At our clients request the exterior also includes panels of timber cladding which has been sustainably grown and milled into cladding. The Abodo timber also provides the benefit of dimensional stability. Internal walls are timber framed which provide the benefit of lightening the weight of the structure, are a sustainable resource and provide for ease of future alternations to the interior that may be desired over time.

Windows are deeply receded into the framed walls to provide sun protection which is further enhanced through the external roller blinds.Internally the void space and highlight windows provide excellent opportunity for cross ventilation.

PHOTOGRAPHERS:

Robert Frith.

VIDEO:

Channel 10 - Australia by Design.

Alex Clapin.