Location: Kosciuszko National Park, New South Wales
Country: Australia
Insistent visits from a beetle ultimately provided the insight James Stockwell was seeking for this award-winning house.
The curvaceous form of the Snowy Mountains House is not merely sculpture – it arose from practical considerations.
The house had to contend with gale-force winds, which have weathered away the earth to reveal granite and quartz outcrops, as well as freezing temperatures, the possibility of snowfall, and the threat of bushfires.
"One of my main design intentions was to acknowledge the brittleness of the landscape," architect James Stockwell says. "Nothing can be too proud or ignorant of the climate there, because it's going to be knocked around."
The clients' brief was for a small, low-cost, environmentally conscious house that required minimal maintenance and was fireproof. It also had to capture views across Lake Jindabyne to the Thredbo and Snowy Mountain valleys.
From the outset, Stockwell was intent on building with LYSAGHT CUSTOM BLUE ORB® profile made from galvanised steel. "Galvanised steel catches the light well and I thought it would sit beautifully with the snow gums and the greys in the granite outcrops," he says. "It's basically bullet proof – it's very durable – as well as being inexpensive and low maintenance."
Stockwell was also keen to salute the robust simplicity of nearby Mt Kosciuszko huts. "It's also culturally and contextually appropriate, because rural buildings are often galvanised," Stockwell points out.
Having selected his site and main materials, Stockwell scrutinised the topography and climate for design clues. "I believed that if I could get in sync with the natural systems of the site, there might be ways to design building forms that hadn't been seen yet," he says. "I decided to put my notions of houses aside, to see what might occur."
Stockwell was presented with a form, quite by chance. "I was down there camping in a tent, when a Christmas Beetle landed on my notebook," he says. "I tried to blow it off, but I couldn't budge it. It hugged the surface as the wind passed over it. The shape seemed like a great idea for a building: one which grew up out of landscape, so I drew it."
Having settled on the ground-hugging form of his long, narrow building, Stockwell grappled with fitting rooms into its sloping sides – aiming for a harmonious balance between roof height and wall pitch – and anchoring the structure to the gentle slope. A concrete plinth solved the latter problem, while a 3.5 metre-high vaulted roof and six metre-wide section created a pleasing curved barrel shape. The section is segmented, with bathrooms, hallway and bedrooms at the eastern end, and open-plan living, dining and kitchen to the west. In contrast to the 55 degree pitch of the external walls, the interior walls, floor and ceilings meet at right-angles.
Internally, Stockwell created a warm and cosy atmosphere, with pine frames surrounding hoop-pine ply walls, doors and joinery. The domed ceiling is lined with LYSAGHT MINIORB® profile made from COLORBOND® steel in the colour Classic Cream™, so it would "feel like the inside of an egg, in contrast to the shield-like appearance of the exterior," Stockwell says.
The architect's early selection of galvanised steel was reinforced by subsequent deliberations. "It was so sensible on so many levels that it became obvious: it had to be steel," Stockwell explains. Rather than being merely sensible, Stockwell's meticulous approach results in a house that is sculpturally fused to its landscape.
