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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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Breaking the inside/outside divide with the Balmoral House
HomesAndrew McDonald

Breaking the inside/outside divide with the Balmoral House

Australia

The concrete form of Sydney’s Balmoral House by Clinton Murray and Polly Harbison challenges the divide of inside and outside living.


Balmoral is renowned for hosting some of Sydney’s finest views, from beach to bay and bush. It is in response to these views that architects Clinton Murray and Polly Harbison designed the Balmoral House for its owners.

In a move that separates the house from the typical Sydney design, the main living spaces expand over outdoor garden space and a sculpture courtyard in the site’s centre. This design flourish provides a view directly through the site, so that passers-by are able to feel a connection to the harbour below.

The entire design of the Balmoral House evidences a desire to both protect the occupants and simultaneously invite in guests through a strategically conceded design with no strict front wall but a modest setback and open fence. A second, street-side entry leads through to the courtyard that forms an outdoor foyer intended for entertaining.

Art formed a pivotal aspect in designing the Balmoral House. Within the courtyard undercroft lays a figure with outstretched arms – a piece designed by Antony Gormley, selected to inspire curiosity and consideration about the space it inhabits. While the house is no gallery, but the form, setting, landscape and art are all insprired by a gallery’s sensibility as a fluid and interrelated system, with ‘art’ being treated as the third occupant of the house.

A highlight of the design of the Balmoral House is the powder room; round in plan and coloured in red, the room is filled with round fittings and furniture, with a purposefully out-of-scale high ceiling designed to create a wonderfully playful Alice in Wonderland feeling.

Clinton Murray
clintonmurray.com.au

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Photography by Brett Boardman. 


About the Author

Andrew McDonald

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Home ArchitectureHouse ArchitectureResidential Architecture


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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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