I commissioned that D House (2000, Donovan Hill) in 1994. In my 25 years in residence I was often asked for his place and his time, the relationship between customers and architects and the “design” of the house.
After I lived in London and Rome, I returned to a queenslander of a Brisbane worker and later found that his 313 square meter backyard was a potential location for a good building. But how – with a sad location and a modest budget – could light, acoustics, warmth/humidity, seclusion and connection as well as the inevitable assumptions of the council be managed and at the same time contain beautiful proportions, a refined material palette and just access? The familiarity with the urban participation and many different household configurations that were obvious in the broader world focused on.
The architect agreed to these interests. From the beginning, Timothy offered potential design strategies that would overlap the performance with experience in the final building. He played fluently references and precedent – global, proven. The D-House diagrams, tester plans and role-playing games included me in possible options. He usually presented scaled plans, including some projects that he had already built. Only through life in the house did I gradually appreciate the effects of decisions that turned out to be embedded in the plan.
What was written about architecture describes the characteristics more than the ideas behind it. For the many student groups and visitors, I try to explain how Timothy's design strategies work here to change my life here, although they now seem to be so inevitable that they can be easily overlooked. The plan for this small house lasted three months to design, and everything else was intended and seamlessly flowed from it. The plan itself provides the permanent experiences of life than, for example, shape or styling or care.
Visitors were not only commissioned on the basis of the many design precedes used here, but also invited by comparing the advantages of the most important aspects of the Dhouse plan -for example sequence, circulation, terrain and scale. I ask you to imagine what the experience could look like if: The area on the construction site would not be used and did not rise from the street. Instead of an entrance gate to the Reich, they entered the main room directly from the street via a central front door. Instead of the elongated entrance sequence, they went directly into the bedroom. I also find out how different the main room would be if it contains furniture instead of built -in seats and how its relative expanse and comfort of cupboards would go back instead of storage in separate rooms.
Timothy's thesis (approx. 1989, when interest rates were 17 percent) for double occupancy as a potential option for urban consolidation for dealing with generations and apartment stress. Even its earliest buildings consolidate the entire location. Miniatures of public spaces appeared than the focus of the plans. Like the D-Hausdesign, a large part of this work was foresight, a pre-covid 19 and pre-housing crisis concept. At first and accidentally, Timothy and I were two individuals for 13 years who created a common household here – supposedly 150 square meters per “object”. Three and then four people lived here at different times. You can come and go independently of others, run domestic, private, public and business functions and build different relationships with the entrance terrace. These things make a difference for me and many others. The tiny “Urban” plazas enabled unexpected addresses for several occupations.
The approach determines a location for different types of processing in a limited area. Sounds archaic, isn't it? The construction of the territorial border, when used in plan and section, enables a gated entry, the development of the “city in the miniature”, the preliminary spread, architectural promenade and the many other interests that were observed in the work of Le Corbusier, Aalto and James Stirling: distribution of public spaces, courtards and sequencing. This makes “experience” and not the form that is of crucial importance.
The unattropy terrain and the lengthy, sad frontage of my original garden were cut and filled to form what Timotheus once described as a “high -quality super terrace”. This reset the presence of the hot, dry street and shifted awareness in the sky – my garden has now been rebuilt, a new place and a new context. Limited in plan and section, the surrounding elements are an essential part of the scheme, be it part of the house or not.
The rising public walk is a hairpin for the rising entrance path next to the front wall of the house, which can be replaced with the wall at the location border. There is a gate in between. This extends over the entry sequence and the interior movement to contain invented views and experiences that collapse with the cycle. At the gate there is the possibility to continue climbing on the shoulder of the new site to the summit, where two meters above the street, comfort and view are experienced. This invented landscape is a underpower aspect of the design that is so easy to look at for granted. After digesting it in the D house, I took his presence in so many of Timothy's designs.
The terrace floor below the summit and above the pond is much smaller than the volume in which it is centered. Various elements also rounded out many of the beauty points in Timothy's other projects. I now sit on the terrace and first contain a dwarf wall, a mini mountain, a rocky path, a garden wall, even a miniature building and half a moat. Second, different doors lead either into the interior or into the hall or to the independent private room. Each door is treated differently, where points are displayed where more slowly enjoying a preview of what will come. The flatness of the soil continues relentlessly, free of projective thresholds. It consists of two plates: a lower structural plate is under large secondary concrete tiles, divided by channels (reverse thresholds), recesses for drainage, grids, door panels, fishing pond, plantings, etc. It seems intentional that the floor is the main decoration of the house. Light jump out of the ground, walls, openings in the roof and vertical surfaces and register shadows of clouds and leaves in the house, which shift according to the intended day and season. Maybe it explains the comfortable and cool atmosphere – or is that the immediacy of the well -kept landscapes or the unequal materiality? Adorable; I could continue.
I visited some of Timothy's other houses – Z House (2010, Donovan Hill), MM House (2002, Donovan Hill), N House (2004, Donovan Hill) and Daylesford Longhouse (2019, Partners Hill). Regardless of style, the consistency of his thinking is obvious. Lower sites or “addresses” in “Cities in Miniature” have prevailed in the citizens' buildings. Without exception, the entrance is carried out by a gate that organizes sequencing in order to drive the circulation forward, and with a public or wonderful room somewhere on the way. The public spaces are always carefully involved with the route, the addresses, the fronts – all are enjoyed and enjoyed as in other cultures such as “part of the city”. Timothy also uses thinking in the I House (Installation House, 2017, Partners Hill) in Ingle Hall, Hobart, where the building from 1811 contains an existing shell. Julian Worrall describes the building in 2020. 1 It is a suitable word – it provides for the plan as a source of liveliness.
Visitors to the D house are amazed that it is now 25 years old. It is still part of the training of a large number of successful architecture companies that work on conditions, light, openness and intimacy and a feeling of enclosure and bourgeois connection. The planer is the raffle line; It underpins the life -supporting charm of the house. The way Timothy uses differentiation and orchestration means that characteristics are not open, but subtle and modest and, regardless of the activity, create a comfortable, stimulating and safe atmosphere.
The D house lasts as a special scene for the discussion and reflection on architecture and its cultural role in a high -quality environment. It is a compact but generous example of how Timothy has modestly advanced architecture in Australia and elsewhere.
– Geraldine Cleary studied at the University of Queensland and in the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. In recent years, their advisory work has focused on editing books, writing research reports and financing applications. She commissioned the D House in 1994 and, in consultation with the architect Timothy Hill Tours.
1. “Never presented plans: Architect Timothy Hill” by David Neustein (The Monthly, March 2020). See: thetly.com.au/issue/2020/march/1582981200/david-nostein/plans-never-imagined-architect-Timothy-hill
2. “Geraldine Cleary, Brisbane Australia: The light embedded in the light” in the Kinfolk house: Interiors for slow life by Nathan Williams (Artisan, 2015)
3. “Best of Australian Homes 2013: Geraldine Cleary” by Lucy Feagins (The Design Files, 2013). See: thedesign files.net/2013/12/bestof-ustralien-homes-2013-Geraldine-Clary
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5. “Donovan Hill, Brisbane, Australia, D House”, by Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper (UME 15, 2002). See: umemagazine.com/alphaildex.aspx