A touch of glass

CRAIG Rosevear's stunning creation in concrete, steel and glass in Bellevue Hill, Sydney.

Sliding doors allow the bedroom to be either open-plan or private. Photo: Brett Boardman

GLASS is not the most obvious material to build a house from. ItÂ’s fragile and prone to breaking. ItÂ’s also usually transparent and, on its own, offers little in the way of privacy.

Then there’s the impact a glass house has on the environment – an all glass house requires mechanical heating and cooling to make it habitable. Yet Hobart-based architect Craig Rosevear has made building houses with an unusual amount of glazing his hallmark and has collected many plaudits for his designs, including Australian Institute of Architects awards in Tasmania and NSW as well as national AIA awards.

Rosevear’s glass-skinned buildings have much to do with his Tasmanian origins. Heat is not a problem in the Apple Isle, neither is space and Tasmania has developed a reputation for cutting edge architecture that responds to the external landscape.

GALLERY: The house in pictures

But what happens when the external landscape is suburban Sydney? How do you build a house from glass that is energy-efficient, private and still engages with its surroundings? The glass walls of this home in the Sydney suburb of Bellevue Hill literally invite the outside in. “The glass walls are very much a product of what the owners, Carmel and Michael, wanted,” says fellow Tasmanian architect Martin Stephenson, who worked with Rosevear on this project and who was based in Sydney for the early stages of the design and construction. “The brief was for a light, open house and a major desire was to be able to see the view when you opened the front door.”

The house sits within an off-form concrete “cradle” with the visible external walls largely constructed from steel-framed glass. Glass bricks and timber shutters are used over the glass panels to provide privacy. Sliding glass doors at the rear of the house open to decks and views to the northeast.

According to the building’s owners, the house is “technically proficient and hard-edged but transparent with a lightness of being”. The glass and timber facade, in an established suburb where solid-looking edifices are the norm, makes it an unconventional house in its environment.

Michael says the Rosevear-designed Archer house in Whale Beach, which won the NSW Wilkinson Award for Residential Buidlings in 2001, was the “beach house in the suburbs that Carmel wanted”. Rosevear explains that the narrow nature of the block was “a constraint that became a possibility” with the concept of a steel-framed glass house set into a cradle allowing light and ventilation to enter the house from 3m-setbacks on either side.

“We had done a house like this before,” says Stephenson. “But it was on a remote Tasmanian headland where the owners wanted to live in the view. This, being an urban environment, made us think more creatively with the external timber sliding screens and translucent glass bricks on the southern side framing the stairs to provide the privacy the clients needed.” Carmel was reluctant about the glass bricks when originally proposed, thinking of “those thick bottle-like squares from the 1970s. The finished product, however, is calm and simple,” she says.

The house is situated on a steep block and the classic Rosevear grid structure responds to this with four layered levels that graduate in steps down the hill. Stephenson describes the stairs that run down the southeastern side of the house as a “vertical corridor” or “movement gallery” which, with its adjoining glass wall and flexible spaces on each level, transforms the staircase from practical to theatrical. At night, light glows through the space; the owners describe the effect as a “a lovely translucent wall of white”.

Rosevear is a perfectionist, says Carmel, “every line matters and everything is precise and well-crafted”. Within the grid structure of the house is a totally flexible, shape-shifting configuration of spaces. Huge sliding doors double as walls: when shut they form a corridor along the stairway passages; opened they reveal bedroom and living areas. This means larger rooms can be created in an instant and spaces transformed from cosy to expansive.

“Bedrooms can borrow from the gallery space so the stairs become a social connection to all parts,” says Rosevear. An informal living room adjoining the downstairs deck and pool area can offer a snug nook or open up to be a spacious entertaining area, a plus considering there are two teenage children resident.

Moving from a “classic Tuscan, rendered structure”, the owners say their new home is much more in line with their lifestyle and design choices. “This house is not precious and doesn’t require decoration,” says Carmel.

“The materials used are the finished material. There are virtually no painted surfaces. My background is in interior design but I don’t like items to be purely decorative. They have to be useful as well.”

Large sliding partitions and wall linings are finished in brush box veneer, a dominant feature in the interior, adding warmth to the generally neutral tones. The dining table and beds were designed by Rosevear Architects and handcrafted in the same material. The external shutters are fabricated from celery top pine, sourced from Tasmania. “Much of the classic modern furniture you can buy here is from Europe where spaces tend to be smaller,” says Rosevear. “One of the great advantages of designing furniture is that you can work with the exact scale and space.”

The glass hothouse effect is countered by the ability to open up the complete northwest side of the house through the sliding glass panels. External timber shutters take care of light and privacy requirements.

Opposite, on the northeastern wall, frosted glass louvres allow for cross-ventilation as do doors opening to the decks. Clerestory windows also afford opportunities to find a cross-breeze. Little, pebbled gardens are dotted around the house, sometimes adjoining rooms and creating intimate sanctuaries.

The house’s palette is calm and neutral with Spanish blue limestone on the floors. The exception is “the Boys’ Room”. Here there is a dark grey plush carpet, black cabinetry, a black chalkboard wall and, as a focal point, what Carmel calls “my husband’s obsession – a Brunswick pool table felted in bright orange.

There’s also a “secret” cinema: a large room on the bottom level features a wall of built-in bookcases, but there’s also a drop-down projector and a screen that descends from the ceiling whenever a movie night is called for.

“I have a pool room, a cinema, a library and a herb and veggie garden outside the kitchen,” says Michael. “The rest of it was the architect’s vision. Carmel was very much of the opinion that choosing an architect means letting them invent something for us. She didn’t want to pick someone and then constrain them. I am a modernist in that I agree with nearly everything my wife suggests. This is because she has constantly proven to have better taste than me.”