Architecture Style

Bark Design Architects, a small Australian practice, have designed a studio for themselves that showcases their philosophy of design and provides a great space to work.  The “workhouse”, an elevated steel, glass and plywood studio, “explores the notion of a mixed work / house typology.”  The architects intended for the project to expresses lightness in its modular structural form, transparency, texture, and a seamless indoor to outdoor connection.

The building can accommodate a design team of five to six people, a house for two people and a comfortable combination of both at times. The main linear work space was conceived as an open veranda with compactly scaled service spaces, such as the kitchen, bathroom, file and drawing storage, running the length of the space. Folded plywood stairs ascend past the large ‘shopfront’ window box, which displays models of past and current projects to a mezzanine level.  The mezzanine level contains spaces for architecture books, quiet reading, sleeping and bathing. From this mezzanine, there is a spatial, visual connection to the above main studio work area. On each level, coastal horizon views are framed perfectly.

The architects carefully placed the building between two mature Brown Bloodwood eucalypt trees as a way to emphasize the relationship between the built and the natural. Perched atop four steel footings, the elevated building not only visually translates into a light “floating” project but also minimizes any disturbance to the natural ground line and the trees’ root systems.

The project stresses the architects’ beliefs that a building should work with the existing conditions and not against them.  Hence, the natural fairly steep topography and existing water courses are maintained and enhanced by the architecture.

The workhouse is a way for Bark Design to successfully work in an alternative to the urban studio environment.