Australian Vernacular Residential Design - Home Design Review

INTRODUCTION

• Before The Architect (BTA) has been commissioned to design a roof system atop two nearly-joined residential buildings in Australia.  This e-article is taken from a consultative design review with the clients.

• The design style of the residence under major remodel is to be Australian Vernacular. 
  • This style is as much or more about roof design than any other element in a home's structure

• This custom home designer embarked on a research journey –
  • To set the parameters of Australian Vernacular design for the mutual understanding and agreement of both BTA's principals and its clients
  • To grasp the spirit and the letter of a residential design style previously unknown to this designer

Comment:  Typically, BTA addresses residential styles elementally French or English, either in their native formats or in their American morphs.  In this context, Australian Vernacular is broader than the English Manor including its simpler equivalents and narrower than French styling.

• This basic reference work was intended to learn and appreciate that which is ahead by looking back in time.

THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER

• Australian Vernacular is a legitimate home design style more on the order of French Country for its latitude, and, English Manor House or any of several forms of Victorian from which this design style draws features; it's not singularly definable

• In its simpler presentation it's a rectilinear, unarticulated structure with corrugated iron roofs, verandahs on two or more sides, eleborated and otherwise decorated little if any at all

• Six sources have been more useful than several others –
  • Timber and Iron: Houses in North Queensland Mining Settlements, 1861-1920 by Peter Bell, University of Queensland Press, 1984
    • Instructive
    • Taken aback, this author was, by a multiple gable format
      • Virtually unavailable in the U.S., except rarely in Key West, FL, far as this custom home designer has observed
      • Characteristic of here-and-there in early English Manor House in the Gothic Style mid-millennia
    • Interesting to see what's known as Victorian froufrou showing up particularly in latter-day vernacular
    • Interesting to see what AG and The Missus know as American Craftsman evidenced a bit, e.g., exposed rafters, but less than expected, even in the European version
  • "Vernacular Architecture in Queensland, Australia: Current Planning Issues and Opportunities" by F. N. Demirbilek et al., School of Design and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, undated, but in this decade
    • Definitive
    • Scholarly

Comment:  Two other print sources may be useful, though this home designer cannot yet tell

• The Architecture of East Australia (Paperback) by Bill MacMahon, Axel Menges, 2001
• Gunyah, Goondie & Wurley: The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia by Paul Memmott, University of Queensland Press, 2008

If you can witness to the value of either of these documents or others in this enterprise, please do

• For inspiration, four as-built properties, most of ‘em in Toogoolawah and McConnel Park Precinct, the lovely confection of R. S. Dodd

St. Andrews Anglican Church, its backside, not its frontside 

 

Source: http://www.anglican.org.au/archive/images.cfm?BrowseCategory=24#title

Comment:  This design style is labeled ‘Federation Arts & Crafts,' an Australian moniker among twelve so-called Federation styles borne elsewhere, including among others Queen Anne, Bungalow, and Romanesque.  This one among the twelve can, in the author's opinion, be subsumed in Australian Vernacular at its highest end.

• The combination of roof slopes – both steep and shallow as they come – is dramatic
• The boldness of the main structure is all but larger than life
• Also, please note the roof flares, more common, he thinks, to England than France, purposely to shed runoff from high walls narrowly outset
• The strength of the hipped extension – too grand to call it a bay – is among the strongest presentations of timber and stickbuilt design BTA has seen

St. Andrew's Anglican Church Close Up to Highlight the Ordinary Buttresses and the Flared Roof

Source: ibid., Anglican.org.au

• There's no intent hereabouts to emulate that steep slope in the residential roof design , though it's great fun to see how the builders made it work
  • Please note the ordinary buttresses to counter thrust

Comment:  Buttresses of all sorts were applied beginning in the 12th century and developed in earnest into the19th century, BTA has ever seen such design and construction whatsoever in wood-framed structure.  

• A Property in the Park
  • This represents about a fancy a pair of elevations
  • This sets the upper limit on where this enterprise might take us, though BTA figures this is too visually rich for the clients' sense of your residential design, though it is their call
  • Intersecting gables appear a signature of the Australian Vernacular, and seem to allow the most likely means to get up a second level over grade
  • Fretwork is well proportioned
  • Porchrail balusters are unusually elaborate
  • Hard to figure all the glazing on the left side toward Back Of House, unless it's a northern exposure

Source: ibid., Demirbilek et al.

• The pyramidal roof segment is characteristic of the style, functional, and visually interesting
  • Please note the understated fretwork

In the upper-middle range of vernacular modality is this beautiful example -

 

Source: http://www.boadicea.com/supporting/bvac/images/IMG_0168.jpg

• Porch roofs are steeper in Australian Vernacular than in Traditional residential design – they're pitched down marginally, but nowhere near as much as Traditional conformance
• The cruciform, or mirrored, intersecting gables, is unmistakably English and absolutely in-style
• The windows in this example are larger than the common norm in deference to more temporally contemporary interest in natural light intrusion
• The cropped hips at the primary gable's ends are cunning

• Taken together, the Australian vernacular is broadly defined with a recognizable core and latitude that can be either simpler or more complex
  • Simpler vernacular is too simple for this project, requiring, in the main, a rectilinear footprint, harkening to the American Wild West one- and two-story boxy stickbuilts
  • There isn't much vernacular more complex than the core presentations that the author's noted; however, of what there is, a few are inspirational

• Australian Vernacular core residential design characteristics follow, primarily related to roof design –
  • FACES EXTERIOR RATHER THAN INTERIOR
  • OPEN HABITABLE AND COVERED
  • SEVERAL EXTERIOR PASSAGES TO COVERED AREAS
  • 4-6 MAJOR INTERIOR SPACES
  • STEEP ROOF PERMISSIBLE, THOUGH UNLIKELY IN THS ENTERPRISE
  • LIMITED DECORATIVE ELABORATION: FROUFROU, BRACKET, PEDIMENT, BALLUSTRADE, FRETWORK, ETC.

Comment:  All the elaborations are evidenced within the 7 or so Victorian formats: brackets, as well, are presented in American Craftsman; both pediment and balustrade, albeit both are minimally and not necessarily correctly detailed (a customary design variation thereabouts is to minimize to a single trim piece for a raking cornice or leave it out entirely and to offer no return – as a consistent presentation which it is in all this custom home designer's seen, it's expression is responsible crafting. . . though not frequently witnessed elsewhere), are founded in Classical design.  Quite a mix.

• CENTRAL HALL OR CORRIDOR [about which this enterprise shall be nonconforming]
• EXTENSIVE OVERHANGS WITH PORCHES, ETC.
• NARROW OVERHANGS WITHOUT PORCHES, ETC.
• DEEP PORCHES, OR VERANDAS, NOT SCREENED, EXTENDING INTERIOR SPACES
• SUN SCREEN, LATTICE, ETC.
• DYNAMIC, HORIZONTAL LOUVERS
• MORE OPEN TO SUN ON THE NORTH
• MORE AND LARGER WINDOWS IN DEFERENCE TO CULTURAL MODERNITY
• CLEAR AND NOT COLORED (?) WINDOWS IN DEFERENCE TO CULTURAL MODERNITY
• ROOFLINES MAY BE HIP, GABLE, OR SHED; FURTHER, THE FORMER TWO CAN BE MATED AS IN A CLIPPED GABLE [WHICH HAS ABOUT A HALF-DOZEN OTHER NAMES, INCLUDING SHREDHEAD, AND IS QUINTICENTIAL VICTORIAN)
• SECONDARY AND TERTIARY ROOF SLOPES, INCLUDING PORCH, OR VERANDA, MAY BE SET AT MINIMAL DIFFERENTIALS RELATIVE TO TRADITIONAL FORM
• INTERSECTING AND DOUBLE GABLES ARE OK

• Do you concur, wish to modify, amplify, add to, or delete any of these core characteristics?

HARD COPY REVIEW

Comment:  BTA reviewed hard copy of plans by others including those of the clients – floor plans, elevations, roof plans in plan view.  It is informative, in this custom home designer's opinion, to present that part of this communication with BTA's clients, in order to convey a sense of how much consideration alone goes into a roof design over existing structure.  The following is excerpted for clarity of immediate purpose and concision.

• Please would you express the square footage that you expect on L2 and, if important or wished for, a breakdown as to function and physical relationship?

• Please, what is the ceiling height expected to be on L1?  Do you expect that ceiling to be other than flat at that height, e.g., raised, stepped, pitched, other?

• Is it conventional thereabouts to drop a porch or veranda level below interior or habitable floor level?
  • Hereabouts, that measure is for AG's and The Missus' purposes 6 linear inches
  • Windows on L2 are increasingly difficult to present in-large as porches deepen and the porch roof slope steepens, which is, in other words, to say that inches of design latitude can count bigtime

• Please, what is the ceiling height expected to be on L2? 
  • Do you expect or prefer that ceiling to be other than flat at that height, e.g., clipped to a lower height at gable or hip plane intersections, raised, stepped, or cathedral?

• For a sanity check –
  • Which way from the real property are the cliffs? 
  • Are the cliffs your favorite view? 
  • Or is another and which way is that? 
  • Do you, conversely, have a least favorite view and which way is that?

• All views, please, from the real property.

Comment:  Note please that among the three sketches of roof planes, AG is at least immediately more fond of ALT 1 AND ALT 2 for their easier acquisition of L2 space, albeit the verandas look skinny at first blush.

• The ‘AS BUILT PLAN' is identified as ‘NOT EXACTLY ACCURATE.' 
  • This phrase about accuracy or rather its lacking gives this old guy pause. 
  • Please, what is ‘NOT EXACTLY ACCURATE'?  How much inaccurate is it?
  • Note well that for roof design in a vacuum, AG and The Missus need to be confident that perimeter wall lines are ‘accurate.' 
    • At this moment, ‘engineeringly accurate' is not majorly necessary. To an inch or two is fine for current purposes – more than that, say, past 6 inches on the very outside of tolerance, would not do.

• Can you inform BTA on the whole wall-by-whole wall lengths of the two real properties to be joined, e.g., a simple rectangle would have 4 walls, or two different dimensions?
  • If there's a jog in that simple rectangle there would be two more walls – the jogged walls – and not more than two dimensions, and the major wall lengths would be respectively diminished.
  • Included in this work, please define the width and length of the to-be-demolished segment. 

Comment:  For the time-being at least, if not forever, BTA has little-to-no interest in more clearly grasping how those gross measurements are broken down to fenestration on-centers and such, reckoning the principals can eyeball whassup details from currently available flatwork and photos.

It's the lengths of wall segments with separate identification of articulations that's the big deal.

• Is it possible that you could express dimensions in feet and, if you can tell, inches?  If not, please advise on converting whatever is your metric equivalent.   

Comment: BTA knows that any supposedly good house designer should know the metric metrics casually and with lucidity.  Ask any architect.  Well, AG's staying under his rock.  They've remained parochially nonglobal measurement-wise, akin to their fundamental disquietude with ‘press one for English.' 

Oh, they'll adapt, if they live long enough, or, as one fellow used to say, "In the fullness of time."

• Are there design elements or features in regard to your roof that you would either really enjoy having or really loathe to look at?  

• Are there any functions that you'd prefer to have or necessarily have to have in the veranda designs?
  • For example, clients a while back frequently had church socials at their home, and wanted in their new home to more comfortably accommodate groupings outside, under cover; therefore, AG and The Missus designed two octagonal ‘gathering' decks at the Front Of House. 
  • Similarly, a client from the West Coast is a well-known jazz musician who eagerly expected his musician buddies all over the countryside to show up – often unannounced – to stay and jam by the hour at his new home on the Alabama-Mississippi border.  There is a killer view from this house-to-be and the designed porch favoring that view was just right for this trumpet player to seat his right-sized band and still move around to serve food and adult beverages.