2017 Gallery
Winner: Garden or Landscape
Anthony Gill Architects with Budwise Garden Design for Waterloo House
Essential to the experience of this project is the series of courtyards and gardens layered through the site. Used to filter and protect, these gardens provide relief and a sense of privacy in a dense urban setting. The gardens are intended to grow up and over the house, absorbing it.
Jury Citation
In this modest but ambitious project, the architect has used a light touch to maintain and enhance a house already well loved by its owners. A series of courtyard gardens is integral to and indivisible from the interior, with each room in the house opening to or overlooking a densely planted external space.
Lightweight pergolas provide shade and privacy from overlooking to the rear courtyard, while the hit-and- miss recycled brick screen wall around the first-floor bathroom courtyard provides privacy, shade, cooling and outlook. The re-use of salvaged bricks from the demolition of the original rear wing, for both paving and new walls, provides a robust and maintenance-free structure intended to be completely absorbed by the lush and dense planting over time.
This project demonstrates minimal intervention for maximum outcome. It is a delightful and sustainable outdoor space achieved with an economy of means, and it provides a perceived distancing from its neighbours that is rare in such a high-density inner-city location.
