Mikah

Moorooka Heights Our new build project in Moorooka carries on the “systemised grid” thinking from our H House project in Coolum. Here we wanted to float over the landscape and pull the garden into the heart of the home. Our clients approached us with a brief to design an extensive renovation and extension to a 60’s brick highset home. After creating both renovation and new-build concepts, the decision was made to pursue the latter as it represented a much improved outcome at a relatively small additional outlay. The renovate-and-extend idea would have been quite costly in itself, as it involved substantial retaining work to create a street-level carport, plus associated extensions to both the front and rear of the home. We came up with a systemised build for the home to deal with the steep slope, with a C-shape enveloping around a courtyard. In essence, we wanted to minimise cut and fill by getting the car to do the hard work of climbing up the hill. (This doesn’t mean we design for car dependence - only that the driveway slope defined the height of the lower Building Pad, which controls how much we can minimise the cut and fill to suit). We wanted to push against the “traditional” way of hard retaining walls and solid terraces, by instead creating a more organic and less intrusive relationship with the site - where the landscape “pulls” you into the central courtyard, around which the house revolves. As the first new build in the area, we also knew that we were setting a precedent for the street. In this case, while the geometry is almost an inverse of the old highset homes that line the street, we feel we wanted to make a statement about incorporating and preserving nature and greenery as Moorooka becomes increasingly gentrified. The big volume at the front of the site floats over and connects the home and its visitors to the available city views. The home is structurally prepared for a future Stage Two extension involving a Master Retreat level, added to the rear “wing” of the home. The interiors for this home were designed by Rebecca at Inuti Design SE, based in Stockholm. Project Type New Build Price Range Approx $3500/sqm Status Under Construction Expected Completion End of 2022 Builder Refined Building Company Photographer TBC