Sawmill House
By Archier
We focused our attention away from conventional solutions to investigate highly bespoke and cost effective alternatives. The Sawmill House demonstrates how Australia’s growing hoard of latent building materials can be used in new and innovative ways.
Located on the site of an old sawmill, which fell into remission in the late 90s, the Sawmill House is the result of a close connection between the client and the architect, brothers with a shared creative vision. The established relationship, and the client’s skill set, encouraged us to slowly develop the design over the course of construction, allowing for immediate feedback and bespoke solutions.
We worked closely with Chris’ brother Ben during the construction of the Sawmill House. His skill set – a builder and sculptural artist – interacted with our own, resulting in a move away from conventional design solutions towards more bespoke and cost effective alternatives.
"We were walking around Baxters when I literally tripped over a heap of these blocks. I reckon this was the moment it all fell together, literally, so I rang up Fitzy and told him to push the go button."
Chris Gilbert, Lead Designer
We used 270 recycled blocks to form the perimeter walls. Each block weighs around one tonne and are locally produced from the by-product of concrete slabs poured in the region. This approach contributed to a broader conversation around reuse, encouraging investment and investigation into the largely untapped resource of latent assets.
"The birth of our first child not only hurried progress, but also pushed a heap of child friendly design changes to be made."
Ben Gilbert, Client / Sculptor
Location: Yackandandah, Victoria
Builder: Owner Builder
Construction: Recycled / bespoke
Size: 100m2
Completed: 2014
Photography: Ben Hosking
Awards: National Architecture Award, Victorian Architecture Award, Houses Award
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Sawmill House
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Sawmill House
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About the
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Archier creates engaging architectural spaces and bespoke products, with an emphasis on honest, responsive design and efficient construction.
ARCHIER is an architectural practice with studios in Hobart and Melbourne. We work across residential and commercial sectors and have a particular interest in the relationship between architecture and landscape. We are a privately owned company and have four principals. One of our four directors is also Landscape Architect and this gives us a unique skill-set to work seamlessly across the two domains of Architecture and Landscape.
We work across a range of scales; for a range of clients. Our work encompasses residential, commercial and government architecture; public and private landscape projects; as well as the design and manufacture of furniture and lighting products
Our innovative designs are focused on material honesty, thermal performance and constructability, as we strive for affordable and responsive architecture that contributes to the public domain.
We are interested in projects that span architecture, urban design and landscape and embrace the mantra that design is delivery. Our practice utilises BIM extensively to automate and streamline our design work-flow and we are increasingly leveraging BIM to not only aid and support the delivery and construction of our work; we are also using it directly with Off Site Manufacturers to automate the production of timber based floor, wall and roof elements directly from the coordinated design model.
Our directors have over 25 years of combined industry experience and were drawn together to create an inclusive practice that is truly outcome orientated. We have won awards across a range of disciplines connected to the built environment that recognise our design excellence and innovation, along with our commitment to sustainable buildings and the environment.
As a practice, we have worked on large scale commercial projects with a construction value in excess of $100M through Joint Venture arrangements with Hayball Architects and we have lead multidisciplinary teams for complex commercial projects over $5M in value.
We relish the opportunity to work collaboratively with clients and large project teams to incorporate specialist knowledge and expertise into our work. We are data driven and focused on quality project outcomes. We have proven project experience leading complex projects in sensitive environments and have been recognised for our contextual approach to design.
We have also been awarded for our approach to sustainability and always seek not only to optimise the thermal performance of our buildings, but also to consider the life cycle cost of our material choices.
- ArchiPro Member since2023
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