Nestled in the northern suburb of Coburg, Harry House by Archier is a Japanese-inspired home that radiates familiarity and comfort.
As per the clients’ brief, Harry House is a Japanese-inspired home, with Archier incorporating Japanese design into many aspects of the architecture. Originally, the site was a double-fronted pre-war weatherboard cottage; the clients wanted to retain the entry’s warmth but reorientate the living space to frame the green foliage. This allowed the space to be maximised, combining the old and new aspects of the building.
Named after the family dog ‘Harry’, Harry House experiments with interior design, space and usability. The materials were chosen with care, making sure that each element ages well and is robust for family life. The textures celebrate honest carpentry, with materials that are unpolished yet full of life, adding to the atmosphere of the home.
Harry House is centred around family, with bespoke living areas that connect multiple aspects of the home. This includes the soft netted areas located in the voids, allowing the residents to occupy spaces without needing furniture.
Archier’s extension adds new elements of play, specifically in its design references to a childhood treehouse. The client’s Japanese heritage inspired the house, including how the space interplays with natural light and connection to the lush gardens. Located 10 minutes from the Archier Studio, the house has access to the Merri Creek, as well as restaurants on Lygon Street and Sydney Road.
As a Japanese-inspired home, the layout of the bathrooms was important for functionality and design. With separate spaces for the toilet, basin and bathing, it is easy to see how the architecture was influenced by the client’s heritage, honouring the traditional ways Japanese bathrooms are configured.
Having exceeded the clients’ expectations, and taking design inspiration from the client’s Japanese heritage, Harry House by Archier is a sustainable home, ready to raise a young family.
My name is Chris Gilbert and I was a project lead for Harry House.
Kerberg's in the north of Melbourne, bound by Sydney Road and Ligon Street,
so you have lots of amenity around this area and fantastic access to things like Mary Creek,
great food on Sydney Road and it was only 10 minutes from our studio so it was really
fantastic working in the local context. The site was originally home to a double fronted
pre-war weatherboard cottage. The client wished to maintain as much of the warmth of the entry
through that cottage as possible but really wanted to produce a new lens to this amazing
kind of ramshackle garden that existed out the back, which was a mix of fig trees and like
overgrown kind of multi-generational foliage really. It was super interesting, super deep,
but the old house didn't connect with it at all. So the brief was to really reorientate the living
space to create a frame to that lush garden. I grew up in country Victoria, spending a lot of
my time building cubbies and tree houses in our small little bush block and there's something
kind of primal and childish about that element of play that you really want to replicate when
you grow up. You want the best parts of that to come through into your everyday life
and we had a client that was interested in pursuing that as well. So the outcome is something
that is quite unique to the standard kind of Melbourne box on the back of a pre-war cottage.
You end up with something that's much more playful, much more dynamic. It's like you're living inside
a textural object. The front part of the house retained the original cottage and it's not obvious
that there's been a big renovation done when you first arrive. The sightline from the front door
takes you straight through the extension to the garden and the fig tree and people are immediately
drawn to that. I'm Tanya, I'm one of the homeowners here. I live with my husband Pete and our three
boys who range in age from six up to sixteen. Harry is our dog and the house is named after him
by our youngest son who used to ask if we were visiting the Harry house when we were doing site
visits. The material selection in this building was quite important. We really wanted materials
that would age well, be robust and be quite honest, like honest carpentry and you know
materials and textures that had a life and had like errors and mistakes in them because that's
what kind of makes the tree house, it's not this perfect polished thing. The concrete obviously is
never going to go anywhere but also the inax board, it's indestructible, it's actually fireproof.
So I've got Japanese heritage, the house has deliberately incorporated Japanese style design
elements. Archer already used those in prior projects and it was one of the things that
attracted me to work with them. We have an old mizuya tansu, an old Japanese piece of furniture
which is quite large and we wanted to make sure there was space for that to be incorporated
into the project. The challenge of a long narrow site of course is how to get light into all rooms
of the house. So for this building we kept the original pre-war cottage and inserted a courtyard
between the new and old building and what this does is allow natural light straight into the
rumpus room and like deep into the main kids living space while also allowing the landscape
to wrap all the way around the building so no matter where you are in this space you're looking
out into the garden. The floor area of this building is quite tight, we're talking just a
bit over 200 square meters so in order to get the maximum amount of amenity within that
frame or that envelope we needed to look for alternate solutions and one of which is
providing soft netted areas in the voids rather than additional rumpus rooms and what the nets
do which is pretty interesting is allow you to occupy an entire space without needing furniture
so rather than a room needing to be four by four to have a couch in the corner you can just have
two and a half by three meter space and occupy that entire zone. Obviously we use a lot of glass
in our projects and in particular this project and we find it really helps connect the user with
the landscape and the sky like these blocks are pretty unique really you have the opportunity
to see garden and get this really great sky view factor so the full height glass really
captures both of those elements. Another very Japanese element was the design of the bathrooms
and that was having separate spaces for the toilet, a separate space for the basin and a
separate space for bathing which is how Japanese bathrooms are configured. Lots of people talk
about kitchens being the heart of the home and in that respect this project's no different.
The step-down kitchen is really fantastic because it allows the person who's using the kitchen
to for their workspace to be at 900 mils and it's perfect for preparing food where the people on the
other side of the bench space are interacting with an object that's much more like a piece of
furniture a tablecloth. The house has been incredible to raise a young family in. I love
the light, I love being in the garden, seeing the seasons and the weather change, I love relaxing in
it. The project has exceeded all my hopes and expectations. It's incredible. I'm most proud
that Tanya's happy with the outcome you know it's her house it was designed for her and her family
and if she's happy we're happy. You know it's a family house for living not for filming ironically.
