Yarra House

Yarra House in Hawthorn, by Leeton Pointon Architects with Susi Leeton, won the award for Interior Architecture at the 2009 Victorian Architecture Awards. It is a home of flowing, almost archaic surfaces: rendered walls, limestone, oak and sculpted plaster, a double-height void, and a circular stair at its centre. In the architects' words, floors become walls and walls become ceilings. A house with almost no straight lines is a demanding place for technology. There is no skirting to chase a cable along, no square corner to sit a keypad in, and nowhere for a careless speaker grille to hide. Every device either disappears into the sculpted surfaces or becomes a blemish on them. ZELO delivered the technology design and integration: lighting control, audio visual, networking and wireless, intercom, and security alarm and cameras, resolved into curved plaster, timber and stone so the systems belong to the architecture rather than sit on it. The award was for interior architecture. The best technology in an interior like this is the kind the judges never notice.