Iron Maiden House really rocks > THE WOW FACTOR
Australian home of steel splits down middle in a bid for privacy and light
A home named Iron Maiden House might sound a little heavy, but an Australian family of five has plenty of light-hearted fun in their new home.
The structure, named after its extensive use of steel, splits in two with a pond and walkway down the middle. First-floor living space has an expanse for entertaining and socializing, including the living room, kitchen, dining room — indoors and outdoors — a guest bedroom/ study, plus the outdoor fire pit, pond and pool.
Second-storey sleeping quarters are divided to provide separate spaces for children and adults.
An external walkway that overlooks the swimming pool links the upstairs bedrooms and creates the kids’ independent space. As well as opening to the walkway, the kids’ bedrooms also lead to the second outdoor living area.
Iron Maiden House, which took three years to build and was completed this year, has both water and garden views, as well as a lookout on the city skyline from the upper floor.
Building materials include corrugated-iron cladding, steelwebforge mesh, steel mesh on the raised, external walkway to the kids’ rooms, warm timbers and a black-tiled pool. The building opens to the north and draws natural light throughout the house.
Clinton Cole, with CplusC Architectural Workshop in Sydney, Australia, answers a few questions about designing the unusual residence: Why did you call it Iron Maiden House?
As the name suggests, Iron Maiden House is the first project of this scale in suburban Sydney which has used steel so extensively. It’s the first hot-dip, galvanized, iron-clad house in a very traditional and conservative brick and sandstone housing typology suburb. What inspired the unusual design?
The form is a modern reinterpretation of the gable houses typical of the area. Conceptually, the privacy and beauty of a natural gorge, in which water cuts through rock to form secluded spaces, was replicated with overscale walls to generate the final form. The simple shape was extruded lengthways along the site and sliced down the middle with a pond to form a central axis. Slender, cathedral-like spaces were formed around this thoroughfare, with ponds running parallel to walkways to link the spaces. How did you include the children’s needs?
A lot of suburban architectural projects seem to tack on the children’s rooms. In Iron Maiden House, however, the desire for the children’s growing independence became a powerful driver in creating an open elevated corridor. I can see the children growing up in these rooms, peeling back their sliding doors to the walkway, open to the breeze, sunlight and crawling greenery along the steel mesh balustrade. What were the challenges in building this home?
Given the home is exposed to the street on two sides, it was crucial that any design preserve privacy while maximizing links to the outdoors. This created an introspective proposal where the living spaces all faced inwards toward the rear entertaining spaces.
Also, because the primary structure of the house was steelwork framing, the secondary structure – including timber studwork, joinery, openings and glass — was required to be installed with extreme precision to match the off-site manufactured steel framing.
A number of other construction challenges were faced. The immense size and weight of the bespoke glass panes positioned in the lounge and living clerestories required a crane to hoist them into position. A complex joinery resolution was required to cap the gable adjoining the top peak of the glazing, and a reconciliation of angles within the steel structure which the soffit, fascia, galvanized flashing and external timber skins were able to humbly celebrate. This interview has been edited and condensed.