Yin and Yang House,

Rosslyn Park

The idiom of the ‘Aussie suburban home’ is tossed and turned, yet stronger than ever

Forget plans, it all began with a drawing by a child. ‘For Tony’ it read, with pictures of a pool, a dog and a kitchen bench sketched across a delicately crinkled A4 piece of paper.

For the clients, this would be their home away from home; balancing Cantonese cultural tastes with Australian sun, space, and sky. An architectually designed home for the adults to recline in, their pet Labrador to run around in, and their daughter to grow up in. Yin and Yang house was designed to affect and construct a series of norms and rules of behaviour. Less what a building is capable of, more what is legitimate for it to resolve.

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Tectvs explored multiple design concepts - radical courtyard homes, lone pavilions, facades with spectacle - however, what resurfaced was a desire to respect the ‘neighbourhood character’ of the Eastern suburbs with a single-storey detached house. As such, the project sought to create a residence as a point of difference rather than a wholesale change. The building grid is offset as an homage to the traditional Chinese adage of not having a direct path from the entry doors. Above which, an interplay of raked ceilings and clerestories – one of neutral off-white, the other of charcoal – lead up to an open living and dining space, a properly Australian ‘barbie’ Patio, and of course, a swimming pool and rear greenery that unites the two volumes. The fusion pizazz melds with an emerald glass mosaic, with specialty terrazzo tile sourced from the client’s home province of Guangzhou. 

The end result was a stylish, luxurious home.