This project is an artist's studio in the backyard of an existing house in Thornbury, which was done in collaboration with Phillip Johnson Landscaping. The brief was to create a beautifully detailed, creative space for painting and sculpting to encourage and inspire creativity. Despite being an artist's studio, it also serves as a model for smaller scale living? Could you imagine yourself living in a small-scale space like this?
The studio sits comfortably within an organic landscape design which includes a natural pool not requiring chlorine, a waterfall and creek, to provide a recreational space for the children.
The external materials chosen for the studio were all natural materials with an emphasis on timber that would silver over time, making it blend in with the timbers, water and rocks of the landscape.
Internally, the blackbutt flooring and plywood were used on the floors, walls and ceiling not only as a robust surface for artwork, but to blur the traditional boundaries of floors, walls and ceiling so that it did not feel like a conventional residential space. Instead, the result is a unique, sculptured space that is warm and textured, designed for indirect light ideal for painting and sculpture.
The roof of the studio is used to warm the water of the pool in the colder months, whilst the water from the roof ran down the decorative rain chain into the pool to replace the water that was lost through evaporation. The overflow of the pool was connected to a creek that runs through the backyard, connecting the different areas of the landscape.
