❋Design
❋Design
Tamworth house by MRTN Architects
Although extremely picturesque, this house by MRTN Architects is on fairly rough terrain. Former grazing land, the region has recently experienced severe drought – with much of the property denuded by grazing cattle. For the owners, wanting a new house on the fringe of Tamworth in northern New South Wales, the result shows what can be achieved when climate is as considered as the design – with the home receiving a regional architecture award from the Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter).
“I still recall my first visit to the region. Literally nothing was growing and what remained was wilting,” says architect Antony Martin, director of MRTN Architects, who worked closely with landscape architect Simone Bliss from SBLA. Realising the challenges of the site as much its raw beauty with a string of mountain ranges in the distance, Martin presented his clients, a retired couple, with a courtyard-style design. “Our clients regularly have family and friends visiting from the UK, so the functional brief was for three bedrooms, including the main bedroom. They also wanted a shed/workshop to store their boat and tractor, and a separate shed for car parking,” says Martin.
Most rural houses feature the house and a series of detached sheds. However, given the harsh climate and the need to feel protected as much as possible, the two sheds form part of the courtyard arrangement. So, from the approach, the Tamworth house appears, like the terrain, fairly austere – charcoal grey corrugated steel walls that enclose the sheds either side and a galvanised steel corrugated pitched roof. However, past the entrance, these walls reveal a ‘gentler’ environment, with the home’s exterior clad in timber and a stone wall delineating the entrance. “We wanted to create more of a microclimate once you pass the threshold,” says Martin, who included a number of interstitial spaces that blur the division between inside and out. There are a couple of these spaces, framed in timber posts and lined with wire to prevent insects from entering. The northern courtyard is roofed in but allows for the breezes to still be enjoyed and for cross ventilation through the house. “This space wasn’t part of our original brief but I’m told regularly that it’s where the owners gravitate to – with the open fireplace making its presence felt during the colder months of the year,” says Martin.
The northern wing also includes the open plan kitchen and the dining area, with an adjacent sunken lounge that creates a heightened sense of cocooning. This living area, while open, is delineated by the pitched vaulted ceilings – one over the lounge, another over the dining area and a third over the kitchen. And unlike the exterior, which can be seen as hard-edged, the interiors feature a strong dose of timber for the walls and the built-in joinery. The kitchen, for example, includes cedar walls and American oak joinery. Burnished concrete floors complement the limited palette of materials.
The owners moved from a relatively suburban house in the middle of Tamworth to its outskirts. With this change came a loosening up in the way they wanted to live – from a brick house with separate outbuildings to a house that blurs the two. While Martin was taken back at first by the ruggedness of the terrain, he now – like his clients, sees the design as an oasis, “a place that engages and draws you in,” says Martin, who enjoys seeing the outline of the northern ranges immediately past the threshold. “It’s certainly not the standard three-bedroom suburban house but that’s the point”, adds Martin.
See more MRTN Architecture on their website or Instagram. Words by Stephen Crafti. Images by Anthony Basheer
