Rhyll Court Residence

Defined by the complex overlapping geometries of its constituent layers, careful detailing, and rich natural materials, this new home combines subtle moments with complex geometry to create an architecture of spatial and formal drama.

Located on the coastal fringe of Rhyll, a village on Phillip Island, the site holds a series of contradictions that carry the conceptual drive for the project: simultaneously suburban and coastal, familiar but unknowable.

A sequence of thoughtfully arranged parallel and oblique walls respond to the suburban grid and hold the architecture in place. Materialized in rammed earth with locally sourced aggregate these walls organise the plan around a sheltered courtyard to create a series of softly lit and texturally rich spaces with framed views.

Programmatically the ground floor defers to vernacular type, small functional bedrooms and utilities alongside open and indeterminate spaces that expand and contract with the varying accommodation demands of a family coastal home. Sliding timber walls offer spatial flexibility within the overall logic of the immutable earth walls.

The central stair void, which provides a dramatic point of entry to the house proper, is a singular moment at which the clarity of the ground floor is overlaid with the complexity of the upper volume, an alternate oblique spatial grid juxtaposed with the suburban orientation of the site. Fine steel and timber detail intersect with the course grain of the rammed earth to further articulate the spatial tension.

Experientially the upper level is a clear contrast to below, flooded with north light the space flows beneath a dramatic timber ceiling as it registers the contortions of the roof shifting between gable and skillion in pure elevation.

The architecture of this project is a complex layering of geometry, spatial framing, material substance, and articulated detail that respond to, and make apparent the contested terrain of the coastal/suburban intersection.

Credits

Photography by Shannon McGrath