The Coming Together of Seperate Design Concepts - His & Hers House by FMD Architects

Integral to the brief was a consideration of accessibility and multi-generational living as a future-proofing exercise for the home. As a result, living spaces are ramped internally and externally, enabling the couple to live comfortably for years to come. With grown children and grandchildren, the home needed to accommodate said visitors in its design and connection between spaces. Throughout, as with many size-restricted sites, storage and concealment of ancillary support was key, resulting in joinery lining the length of walls, optimised between transitional spaces.

The palette is a contemporary combination of warm honeyed timber, refined tiles and details and crisp finishing. The client wanted a layered, multidimensional backdrop for their storied lives and to be able to showcase collections of art, meaningful furniture pieces and living plants and their engagement with literature. Purposefully biophilic, both clients wanted the design to have a direct connection to the gardens, allowing for a feeling of immersion into their every day functions. Across the site, and as a means to abate the narrowness of the site and limited access to a northern aspect, a courtyard is integrated into the centre of the house. The resulting house becomes an inward one, shutting its back off to the neighbouring fence boundaries.

Throughout, the utilisation of a high 4.5-metre vaulted ceiling allows for grandeur of scale, which is then further dramatised through the imposed and integrated geometries. These geometries form a design and pattern language that is present in skylights, fenestration and external cladding. Together with the exposed knots and cracks in the bountiful use of timber, the layered approach to detail and honest expression of materiality provides interest in all spaces.

Designed as a fusion of ideas and as a connection of two people, His & Hers House shows how a built form can quite literally enable the manifestation of the personalities and values of its occupants with a considered approach for their future lives together.