When buying a ready-made house, it is unlikely that you can avoidalterations. It also happens that small means are not enough. How to “make friends” between two completely different parts of the house under one roof? For example, as in this example, you can make two different roofs... In the warm and mild climate of Melbourne (Australia), a house in the suburbs with its plot of land is perceived as a single whole with the nature around it. The natural environment literally envelops the house from the outside, penetrating inside through wide open doors. Moreover, nature here becomes a full-fledged element of decor, a powerful tool of artistic expression. In order to make the most of these decorative possibilities, it was decided to open the house to the outside environment as much as possible by adding new rooms. This is how wide doors appeared, half-wall, leading from the living room directly into the yard, windows to the floor - or vice versa, right up to the ceiling, and, of course, a flat roof with a separate entrance. It is surprising that such large-scale alterations did not affect the “appearance” of the historical part of the house.
The street facade reliably protects the owners fromcurious eyes. And the guest invited inside is met with an unexpected architectural twist, which he does not even suspect when he first crosses the threshold. Indeed, looking at the traditional facade with a gable roof from the street, it is difficult to imagine the presence of a veranda on the roof with a separate staircase outside. Meanwhile, it was precisely this solution that determined both the modern appearance of the house from the courtyard and the laconic interior solution with a simple, geometric layout.
The veranda is hidden from view by all meansobserver: the finish of the rear facade is confusing, the striking contrast of wood and black corrugated metal creates the impression of a two-story house, dividing the facade into two equal parts. The external staircase only reinforces this impression, and the upper line of doors emphasizes the contrast of materials. The doors themselves seem to dissolve, no longer serving as landmarks of the correct scale here.
The rectangular volume with a flat roof wasis attached to an existing building, as evidenced by the difference in ceiling height between the living room and kitchen-dining areas. The theme of contrasting materials and colors is maintained in the interior. The unifying white color of the walls and ceiling seems to “cover” the bright furnishings and floor coverings, and if the contrast of the floor coverings accentuates the space, then the contrast of the furniture materials designates the function of a particular area, uniting the furniture into groups. The huge black glossy wardrobe almost the entire wall serves not only as a storage room — its dark color visually shortens the elongated combined room, while the glossy texture lightens the massiveness.
Narrow windows up to the ceiling, bringing ina noticeable contribution to the lighting of the kitchen-dining room, unexpectedly appear… above the very floor of the veranda on the roof! It is difficult to even imagine how unusual it looks from the outside. And you can see them from the outside only by climbing to the very top: a solid fence made of metal sheets not only tightly hides everything on the roof from views from the ground, but, on the other hand, closes the surrounding houses and fences from the eyes of those sitting on the veranda, allowing you to enjoy the sunset from horizon to horizon.
Against such a backgroundradical architectural and design experiments, the bedroom here looks like an island of tranquility and traditional solutions. Moreover, it is located in the old part of the building, where even the cornice under the ceiling has been preserved. However, even in it, as if greetings from modern times, the same glossy black wardrobe, which so effectively completes the combined space of the living room, dining room and kitchen, rises like a wall. The wardrobe in the bedroom is accompanied by numerous modern details - lamps at the head of the bed, large bed wheels, a picture on the wall. This house seems to balance such opposites as traditional architecture and modern interior design in a separate room, an old house - and a new house, life close to the ground - and a panoramic view from the height of the roof, characteristic, rather, of a city building. How far the use of contrasts as an artistic device can go depends on the courage of the architect and the readiness of the customer himself for unexpected solutions, his openness to experiments.
An unusual example of remodeling a country house - etk-fashion.com
