Stuart Tanner Architects

Pirates Bay House – Eaglehawk Neck

(Continuación)

Stuart Tanner Architects es, sin duda, paradigmático en la concepción más progresista de la práctica profesional.

Stuart Tanner Architects

Fotos: Brett Boardman
(2005 Australian Photographer of the Year)

Texto original en ingles::

Pirates Bay House: Project Description
The Pirates Bay House is a small coastal retreat near Eaglehawk Neck on Tasmania's Tasman Peninsular. It has been designed primarily as an informal, intermittent use building. The clients requested a contemporary, steel framed building that made best use of an awkward site and brought the coastal aspect of its location into the living spaces. The driveway was an existing site condition, so the clients’ brief of being able to park under the building is fulfilled and interpreted to create physical drama and tension.

The building’s dramatic gesture toward the ocean is tempered by a more intimate dialogue with the rear of the site, thus symbolizing a bridge transition between wooded glade and open ocean vista.

Expressed structure and engineering are an intrinsic part of the architecture, correlating with the notion of the building as a hovering platform from which to experience nature. Architect, engineer and fabricator worked harmoniously to create a place where landscape, structure and space combine to become an exhilarating experience.

Materials are expressed honestly in an attempt to retain lineage with the perception of a coastal building. Spaces are flexible for holiday living, and the circulation arrangement generates privacy for sleeping areas.

Entrance to the building is intentionally at the rear to avoid the insertion of a stair and, more importantly, to reinforce the experience of a ‘bridge journey’ upon arrival. Visitors experience the bush as they approach the building entry, then Pirates Bay reveals itself both in site and sound as one proceeds along the platform.

As one approaches the building the perception is of structure as a readable architectural language. When one enters the building, the perception shifts to that of the landscape. Internal spaces invite the user to engage with both intimate and distant vistas, thus dismissing the need for a complex interior. The immediate site is therefore used, through architecture as a vehicle, to reveal the drama of the greater landscape, connecting the user with multiple aspects of the site’s breathtaking coastal proximity.

Relationship to site and context
The Pirates Bay House attempts to engage with multiple aspects of its dramatic site. Through architecture we have endeavoured to comment on the coastal margin, and how we might experience a landscape dominated by the ocean. The site already affords a certain elevation, being relatively narrow, steep and above Blowhole Road, which itself runs along a cliff escarpment above Pirates Bay Beach. The rear of the site bleeds into the forested edge of the Tasman National Park, allowing the architecture to reflect the regional landscape characteristic of "forest to the sea" by paying some homage to the beautiful gum sapling bush at entry.
The building is sited high on the title for this reason, and to afford increased drama of the suspension toward the ocean. This solution also creates a minimum building footprint and avoids the driveway, which was a pre-existing site condition. When viewed from across the bay, the building's position subtlety punctuates the general settlement pattern of dwellings along Blowhole

Road, without impacting heavily on its immediate landscape. It is oriented generally between the north and south ends of Pirates Bay, giving no real priority to either, while making a strong gesture toward the open ocean and the mean point of dawn. The progression through the building from entry to the living space is intended to reveal the greater site, both in sight and sound, bringing the ocean to the building, while the surrounding trees remind us of edge.

Architectural expression of the concept
Beginning with a bold concept, time and thought was devoted to resolving an elegant structure that explored both the qualities of the site and the notion of coastal edge, while satisfying a simple brief. The building is both “bridge” in the physical & architectural sense and symbolically through the suggestion of a connection between landscape and sea, giving the building a combined power of expression. The singular support wall could be seen as the demarcation of that edge, with the building reaching beyond.

Environmental / energy efficiency
The client was adamant that the building should retain the principle of a coastal “shack”; his philosophy was that, as a “shack”, one should connect with the outside environment both visually and thermally, rather than being “sealed off from outside”. The glass of the main panels was intentionally specified as clear single skin to reduce overall cost and ensure maximum visual connection from inside to the surrounding landscape. Despite these factors, the building performs thermally very well. Careful attention to insulation in the floor ceiling and walls, coupled with louver systems and exterior sunscreens assist in keeping interior temperatures ambient. Very little supplementary heating is required.

The project received a building permit prior to the introduction of the environmental efficiency requirements in the Building Code of Australia. Early on in the project we investigated the option of solar power for a portion of the building’s functions, but the cost of the infrastructure at the time proved prohibitive. Despite this we the following measures to increase the building’s sustainability:

- a minimum site footprint
- attention to insulation quality and rating wherever possible creates good thermal control
- high winter solar gain
- passive summer cross ventilation through cedar louver systems;
- minimizing overall current draw for the building through careful selection of lighting, appliances and use of a gas water heating system;
- on-site waste management system and grey water recycling;
- on-site fresh water catchment and storage;
- careful retention of existing natural vegetation surrounding the building;
- eradication of non native plant species and regeneration of endemic species

Stuart Tanner Architects is an emerging, dynamic architectural practice based in Hobart, Tasmania. Our project spectrum includes domestic architecture, medium scale commercial and tourism projects both within Tasmania and on mainland Australia. We embrace a strong connection with Tasmania, its diverse landscape and coastal margin, and strive to reflect this relationship within our architecture. We take a highly contemporary approach to the spatial arrangement, materiality & form of our buildings. Public space, landscape and urban design play an important role in the context of our work. The sustainable capability of our architecture is an integral component of any design we undertake and the impact of a particular project is considered as a combination factors, such as its scale, influence over its site and greater context, in addition to its passive heating and cooling ability. We view contemporary architecture as the pivotal ingredient to a rich environmental culture and a vitally important aspect of a future sustainable society.

Organization of spaces inside and out
A very simple plan is the result is the result of an uncomplicated brief, with two equally sided bedrooms, set on the southern “quiet” edge of the building. Wet areas are consolidated to one zone. The main corridor serves as entry circulation. This corridor controls movement through the building, releasing the visitor once they enter the main space. The kitchen was designed to be a place of entertainment as well as a work area. Decks surround three sides of the building to enhance the feeling of space and the sense of a “floating platform for living”.

Structure, construction, materials, services
The structure is predominantly a prefabricated steel frame that rests on a core filled block wall. The main platform is connected to the site at the rear, suspended approximately midway by two steel straps and the entire structure is stiffened beneath by thin steel rods to footings.

The structural resolution was a result of a cohesive and enjoyable relationship between architect and engineer. Materials include blackwood exterior cladding, ship lapped, with each screw fixing countersunk and plugged with Myrtle. Significant pieces of joinery are solid blackwood. The timber louvers are cedar.

All services enter the building via conduits within the main support wall eliminating distracting infrastructure. A self contained sewage & grey water system processes waste on site. All fresh water is collected from the roof and circulated by a pump system. Water is heated by gas. Supplementary heating is achieved by a cost efficient system of electric ceiling heat. This combined with the gas water heating system is ideal for the intermittent use expected of the building.