Temple House is a new house in Hawthorn designed for a discerning art-loving couple and their three kids. They were not misled by the naive idea of wanting their house to be just a piece of art for living in, but more generously wanted a house with spaces and qualities that would awaken the same feelings as experiencing a great piece of art – transportation, inspiration, the sublime. Pragmatically, the house design began by addressing universally non-negotiable factors, like access to northern light. The property has a northern street frontage, which would typically result in a single-volume house at the front of the property with south-facing openings leading to a light-compromised outdoor space at the back of the property. But here, rather than defaulting to that typical dynamic, it was inverted, with a house of multiple volumes weighted toward the back of the property, so the front yard and a central courtyard become the primary outdoor spaces, providing all-day light and garden aspects into multiple north-facing frontages. More intangibly, the house is intended to be perceived as the result of subtractive rather than additive processes – like some larger original object which has eroded back into some smaller trace of itself – to transcend any sense of newness in favour of the enduring and the eternal.
Interior designer and decorator: Golden and Tali Roth.
Landscape designer: Plume Studio.
Engineer: Webb Consult.
Building surveyor: Anthony Middling & Associates.
Builder (house): Overend Constructions.
Builder (landscape): Form.
Photographers: Sean Fennessy & Timothy Kaye.
Stylists: Marsha Golemac & Karin Bochnik.