When you’re asked to design a home accommodating three generations of family, a home office, bedrooms for guests and grandchildren, garaging for five cars, living space, and a bedroom suite on the ground floor with multiple garden outlooks, it’s certainly challenging, but all in a day’s work for an architect. Especially if you’re Reno Rizzo, Director, Inarc Architects.
That’s exactly what Reno creatively and peacefully achieved in this beautiful home in Melbourne’s inner eastern suburb of Armadale. In fact, what Tegl House shows is how clever architectural design can accommodate a large family home onto a centrally located but relatively modest sized suburban site.
Spanning three levels, including a basement, this elegant, yet understated home is designed around a tightly planned central courtyard. Being in a streetscape of mixed architectural heritage, Inarc’s material choice of brick wall cladding and metal roof sits well within the heritage surrounds, while the home’s crisp articulation and massing transcends it into a more contemporary style.
It was the owners who selected Petersen’s handmade Kolumba™ (K91) bricks for their new home, having seen the pale grey bricks extensively used on their trips overseas. With nothing comparable to the pure colour of the K91 bricks in Australia at the time, Inarc was quick to agree.
And the clients are really happy with the end result. As Reno comments, “The house is rectilinear, but the bricks give it an unexpected softness and even texture. And a lot of it is the colour, it is just a very monochromatic pale grey palette, which is just wonderful.”
As countless architects have commented, and what Reno also particularly likes about the Petersen Kolumba™ bricks is, “The handmade aspect of the brick – the bricks aren’t totally rectilinear – they have bumps and lumps, and move around in every direction. So even though it looks like a nice flat plane that’s very uniform and textural, there is actually quite a bit of uncertainty about it, which is good.”
As the images convey, Inarc has used the bricks extensively both inside and outside the house. Outside, the bricks are used in a more robust manner, but as Reno says, “The grey tonal material palette of handmade Petersen Kolumba™ bricks, stained grey timber and zinc results in an unexpected monochromatic material refinement.” While on the inside of the house, the palette has been diluted with white battened walls and oak flooring. “It’s very warm when you’re in there. It’s almost velvety,” remarks Reno. The images of this superbly designed and built home truly speak for themselves. There is an overwhelming sense of elegance and calmness in the whole design. In fact, Reno perfectly sums up this project saying, “It offers all the benefits of a freestanding, large family home on a modest site. But it’s a high quality and tranquil home; there is an understated feeling of quality, without being over the top.” And we couldn’t agree more.
For more information on Tegl House, please contact Robertson’s Building Products on (03) 8199 9599. To see additional images of this project, visit Inarc Architects.
Architect: Inarc Architects
Builder: LBA Construction Group
Product: Petersen K91 bricks, 528 x 108 x 37mm
Photography: Peter Clarke