Ramp House by Architects Corner
Architects Corner has designed the Ramp House, a 4-bedroom, modern home located on a rural site, near a lake, in Warragul, Victoria.
From the architect:
“This 4-bedroom home responds to and reflects the elements and objects randomly located in its
rural context of Warragul, Victoria. It’s curved form and aspect offer functional space, unparalleled views and access to light.
The unique form is a response to one clear directive from the clients ‘we want to wrap ourselves around the dam’. Architects Corner utilised this brief in more ways than one, including an alternative to an internal staircase in the form of a 21-metre-long curved concrete ramp, echoing the contours of the building itself.
The clients brief expressed a desire to wrap themselves around the lake. So we did… literally, We threw stones into the water, and watched the ripples collide with each other, creating little avenues and passages, we imagined walking through Richard sellers leaning metal clad curving corridors and thought, is that like walking though frozen ripples?
The concrete ramp replaces the need for a staircase, and although stairs are naturally sculptural features of a home, a ramp just makes it that much more interesting, like walking down the slope of the hill yet, inside…
The ramp sits between two large concrete curved walls… Each panel prefabricated with a radius on the exterior and interior face. As we walked through the concrete plant to inspect the acid wash tests being done, the foreman advised us “Better if you don’t tell em’ you’re the architects”…..
Each curved wall or spine if you like, has a different radius, much like the ripples at any moment in time, one wall along the ramp displaced a little as though shale had detached from the stone in mid-air and created its own ripples that collided and created its own ground zero on the pond.
The concrete surprisingly works very well as a thermal sponge, absorbing the heat gain from the sun and releasing at night internally. The clients have said they had not required heating for two thirds of their first winter which is surprising given the location, yet to experience the summer months… I imagine a few whites will ease the extremeties if the concrete doesnt! So far the house does perform very well as a sustainable and low consuming habitat, although you could argue the use of materials and the construction process are far from a sustainable solution to building design.”
Photos courtesy of Architects Corner
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