Photographs by Andresen O'Gorman & Jon Linkins

Rosebery House
Highgate Hill, Queensland 1998

The architectural intentions include establishing coherence in the relationships between the landscape and building, developing transactional space and creating degrees of transparency and enclosure. The spatial and physical continuity between the hill and the river was important to retain and preserving the long, undulating space of the gully became influential in the decision to site the house as a long, narrow timber structure along its eastern slopes.

In seeking to underscore the greater landform, mend the site and establish points of coherence for the new construction, the architects created a mediating element in the form of a super-scale trellis for climbing plants along the lower contours between the gully landscape and the house. The freestanding, timber landscape screen acts to reinstate an edge to the gully, to further define its volume, and to form an edge at the scale of the landscape. In order to preserve the scale of the gully landform, the western screen is devised to conceal the domestic scale by blurring views of familiar house elements.

The layering of spaces between screens of planting, timber battens, glazing, posts, translucent and opaque walls contributes to the experience of degrees of transparency and enclosure. For example, the long timber screen creates another layer of transparency and enclosure beyond the room. This planted outer trellis permits the selective erosion of the room enclosure and the introduction of filtered light and views through glazing. The glazed pavilions become simultaneously open and protected. A light-negative occurs at night as the interior lights up like a lantern in the landscape.

Andresen O’Gorman
Andresen and O’Gorman started practicing together in 1978 in Brisbane, Australia, where they also taught and contributed to architectural research.

Brit Andresen, a graduate of NTH, Norway, worked in England. Her work was exhibited as part of the Australian exhibition at the 1991 Venice Biennale and at the 1996 Triennale in Milan. In 2002 she was awarded the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal. She is currently Professor of Architecture at the School of Geography, Planning and Architecture of the University of Queensland.

Peter O’Gorman, a graduate of Queensland University, worked on large housing projects in Los Angeles in the 1980s. His Queensland work was represented in the “House Styles” exhibition, which opened in Paris in 1996. He also experimented with eucalyptus construction, innovative housing and low-cost timber buildings from 1965 until his death in 2001.