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Issue 59 - The Life Outside Issue

Issue 59

The Life Outside Issue

Introducing the Life Outside issue of Habitus magazine. With life increasingly being absorbed into a digital space, there is never a more important moment to hold something tangible. In this context, the power of nature to have a physiological impact on our sense of wellbeing has never been more important. So how can we cultivate the benefits of the our natural environment in the most intimate of places – our homes? This was the question that helped to bring this issue of Habitus to life.

A Product of

A NEW POD CAST
HomesEditorial Team

A NEW POD CAST

Australia

An eye-catching design to blur the line between art and commerce is exactly what Whiting Architects’ The Pod project achieves, as Annie Reid peeks inside.


 

“Is this freight or a house?” poses the project architect, Steven Whiting.

Located in Lorne, Victoria, The Pod project sits on a steep and split-into-two site. It was designed to appease a difficult site and frame sunny views, “like a perch or tree house”, Whiting says.

“It was also to maximise natural light and visual access, yet provide privacy,” he adds.

 
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The Pod comprises three levels, one bedroom, a kitchen, lounge/dining, various platforms to enjoy the views, and sits in the front yard shared by a larger main house. The client, a trusted friend of Carole and Steven, the directors of Whiting Architects, engaged the duo to create a property for him to use on weekends.

 

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Also an engineer, the client’s commercial building background became the key inspiration for The Pod, in an abstract sense.

“We had an obligation to create something remarkable when experienced from the outside in – a building with a little client self-expression,” Whiting says.

 

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The building reads as a hard-standing area at the bottom of a block left for industrial detritus, such as shipping containers and empty timber crates that are randomly stacked as if ready for loading and dispatch by sea.

Made from craned-in precast concrete and specialist steel, The Pod has a lightweight construction clad in compressed cement and a three dimensional appearance.

“The key was working with the elements, sun, breezes, shade and shadows, as well as ensuring the orientation was correct,” Whiting says.

 

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The building also utilises solar heat gain in winter to passively warm areas, but opens up completely to catch sea breezes and allow warm air to escape. The concrete offers good thermal mass, which enabled a combined wall/roof structure in the form of a box to be constructed, prefabricated and easily transported to the site.

“It’s a simple collection of objects that inspires a second look,” Whiting says.

 
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Photography by Sharyn Cairns

 

DROPBOX


 

Architect: Whiting Architects
Architect team: Steven Whiting, Emma Hunting
Creative director/interiors: Carole Whiting
Builder: Spinefex constructions
Engineer: Bruce McCraken
Kind of project: Residential
Location: Lorne, Victoria
Parameters of project: one bedroom, one bathroom, living, games room, kitchen totalling 100sq m
Date of project completion: 2013

Whiting Architects
whitingarchitects.com


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ArchitectureconcreteHome ArchitecturehomesHouse ArchitectureInterior ArchitectureresidentialResidential ArchitectureWhiting Architects


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Issue 59 - The Life Outside Issue

Issue 59

The Life Outside Issue

Introducing the Life Outside issue of Habitus magazine. With life increasingly being absorbed into a digital space, there is never a more important moment to hold something tangible. In this context, the power of nature to have a physiological impact on our sense of wellbeing has never been more important. So how can we cultivate the benefits of the our natural environment in the most intimate of places – our homes? This was the question that helped to bring this issue of Habitus to life.

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