Skip To Main Content
Issue 63 - Kitchen & Bathroom Issue

Issue 63

Kitchen & Bathroom Issue

Habitus 63 is arguably the most aspirational issue of the year with Kitchens & Bathrooms to dream about. Whether a family hub, an entertainer’s paradise or somewhere to grad a quick meal, how we live in and spend time in the kitchen is a very personal question that requires thought and an abundance of resources. Always the aspirational eye candy of design, we have some truly lovely kitchens from Greg Natale, YSG, Splinter Society, Sally Caroline and Studio Johnston. Bathrooms are just as important with Greg Natale, Studio Tate, YSG and Those Architects sharing some fabulous insights

Order Issue

A Product of

A Taste of Barragan-Inspired Architecture
HomesEditorial Team

A Taste of Barragan-Inspired Architecture

Australia

This beautiful concrete home in Melbourne took inspiration from the style of Mexican architect Luis Barragan, with one of his contemporaries, Andres Casillas de Alba, commissioned for its design, along with local firm Evolva Architects.


There are two stories to this house in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Camberwell. One is its owner, a prominent plastic surgeon specialising in craniofacial conditions affecting children. He was a member of the highly specialised team of surgeons who, in November 2009, separated the Bangladeshi conjoined twins Krishna and Trishna in a 27-hour operation at Melbourne’s Royal Childrens Hospital. The other story is his and his wife’s obsession with the architecture of the great Mexican architect Luis Barragan.

20141015_DX_1393_F

Their interest dates back to around 1991 when, while working and training in Mexico City, they became familiar with the Barragan House in Tacubaya and experienced firsthand some of the houses of Andres Casillas de Alba, who worked with Barragan from 1964 to 1968, before forging a successful career of his own. Casillas, now aged 82 years, collaborated on Barragan’s signature work, the Las Cuadras, San Cristobal house and stables from 1966. Since 1994 he has overseen restoration works on the Barragan House now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Earlier in his career he attended the Ulm School of Design (a successor to the Bauhaus) in Germany; as well, in the late 1950s he worked in the Milan studio of Italian architects Mangiarotti and Marassutti.

christinefrancis02

Determined to have a Barragan-inspired house in Melbourne, in 2003 the couple commissioned Casillas to design a house for them on a site in a tree-lined street remarkable only for a streetscape of unremarkable late Edwardian houses. Originally conceived of as a modernist structure in white-painted, rough-cast render, in the manner of Barragan, there soon came a shift to constructing the house from insitu reinforced concrete; influenced by the surgeon and his wife’s growing interest in the concrete buildings of Tadao Ando (a trip was made to Japan to study closely Ando’s buildings and the quality of his concrete finishes) and the fact that one of Casillas’ own later projects was realised in off-form concrete. Reminded that Barragan never worked in concrete, the answer is that if Barragan were alive and still practising today “he would almost certainly be”.

Read the full story in Habitus issue #32, available now.

Evolva Architects
evolva.com.au

Words by Joe Rollo.

Photography by John Gollings and Christine Francis.

christinefrancis01
christinefrancis03
christinefrancis04

About the Author

Editorial Team

Tags

andres casillas de albaconcreteevolva architectsHabitus #32Home ArchitectureHouse Architectureluis barraganMelbourneResidential ArchitectureThe Escape Issue


Related Projects
Issue 63 - Kitchen & Bathroom Issue

Issue 63

Kitchen & Bathroom Issue

Habitus 63 is arguably the most aspirational issue of the year with Kitchens & Bathrooms to dream about. Whether a family hub, an entertainer’s paradise or somewhere to grad a quick meal, how we live in and spend time in the kitchen is a very personal question that requires thought and an abundance of resources. Always the aspirational eye candy of design, we have some truly lovely kitchens from Greg Natale, YSG, Splinter Society, Sally Caroline and Studio Johnston. Bathrooms are just as important with Greg Natale, Studio Tate, YSG and Those Architects sharing some fabulous insights

Order Issue