A few years ago Drew and Bea Beswick decided to move from mainland Australia to start a new life in Tasmania. They traded their hectic city lifestyles for 30 hectares of bushland outside of Hobart where they had bought a parcel of land just a few years earlier.
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Daunted by the towering gums and eucalypts they found growing on the block (plus a few Tassy Devils), the Beswick’s decided to aks their friend and architect Aaron Roberts to help them design a home that was sensitive to its context. The couple wanted to create a place in which the kitchen would be at the the hearth of the home, and in which nature would play the absolute starring role.
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Room 11 happily took on the Beswick’s brief and used a grid shape to guide the spatial configuration.
“The building is conceived as a dark container in the landscape, a protective armour revealing a timber inner where outdoor activities take place within the confines of the building envelope,” says Roberts.
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“Outdoor spaces are wrapped in celery top pine and offer various levels of shelter from the wide ranging Tasmanian weather conditions,”
“An entry portal acts as a psychological marker, where views to the landscape are taken away, suggesting a moment of self reflection – I am home, the worries of a day’s work left behind,” Roberts says.
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The rangy two-storey spanning 346 square metres, coated in black weather-resistant paneling called Lysaght and is located ontop of a hill to maximise views.
“I’m interested in this idea of the house being a veil through which you reinterpret or re-view the landscape,” Mr. Roberts said in a recent interview with the New York Times.
View more projects by Room 11.
All photography by Ben Hosking