Best retirement housing design for Global Awards shortlisted
LONDON: The shortlist for the best retirement housing design has been declared.
Over 250 designs have been considered by the awards secretariat. One of the finalists in this category is shown below.
This accessible custom-designed home in the NSW Blue Mountains, with a roof opening to a view of the Milky Way, has won a top prize as one of the nation’s best-designed homes: the Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture.
The brief for the project required that it be accessible for the owner, who uses a wheelchair, but also that it “take him on an architectural journey” he would not have embarked upon alone.
The design is a brick home made from recycled, locally sourced materials, which offers an easy flow between indoors and outdoors.
The chapel-like room at its centre is crowned with an elliptical aperture on the roof, allowing the astronomer to stargaze from the comfort of his sitting room.
The home, designed by Peter Stutchbury Architecture, was named Night Sky.
But its design choices — like a deliberate decision to ignore a northern orientation — took a while for the prize’s judges at the Australian Institute of Architects to dissect.
They initially viewed its design as “naive and even under-considered”.
But a closer inspection of the attention to detail and adherence to their client’s brief led the jury to reconsider.
“The potentially deeply problematic choices, deftly orchestrated, develop into a priority that is singular,” the jury said, noting it fit the client’s desire to “connect with the universe and galaxy”.
The home is also completely off-grid, generating its own electricity with its power production designed to last at least 120 years.
For his part, the client said he was happy with the home, in a perspective published on the Australian Institute of Architects website.
“I repose in total physical and spiritual communion with my home of multiple vistas,” he said.
“I am content and satisfied in my mountain cabin.”
The Global Award winner will be announced in December in London. (Globals)
