Within a Landscape : A house on Stradbroke Island

Abstract

The paper is description of an instance of project based design research. The project described and refl ected upon is a beach house which explores ideas of how architecture and people might relate to landscape. The paper discusses the processes of abstraction used to move from initial site descriptions in traditional and digital media through to an eventual architectural proposition. There is a discussion of the relationship of people and the landscape, and of the landscape and new building. Ideas are explored which move in a different direction from the ‘touch the earth lightly’ propositions of Murcutt and others. Key ideas revolve around the resolution of people/nature oppositions,
and the use of the architectural expression as a mechanism for manipulating that opposition. The expression is both a sensual experiential one, and a cognitive and revelatory one, but always draws upon and ultimately hopefully reveals the perception of
a shared unpinning to both the landscape and the architectural piece.