ARCHITECTURE

Building on her affection for bricks and mortar, architect Hannah Tribe casts her gaze on devising handles and pulls.

Hannah Tribe’s love of heritage informs her new hardware range.

IT I S ENTIRELY FITTING that a conversation with architect Hannah Tribe begins with small details and expands outwards conceptually and geographically. She has recently launched a range of architectural hardware that skilfully combines aesthetics with durability and sensory experience. “Touching is how you engage with architecture after looking at it,” she says. Working on a range of heritage houses Hannah came to realise that she wanted to mimic the gravitas, the weight and solidity of what was once there in terms of handles, hooks and door pulls, while retaining a contemporary spirit. Created in close collaboration with Adam Corry, whose wealth of experience in metalwork and engineering ensured Bit Part was born. “The small things play a cameo role in the house but are also a signifier of the larger work. So we are working with marble and brass – materials that are unfinished and tarnish, building their own history over time,” she explains.

Hannah is no stranger to collaborations – the most meaningful of which are with her staff which she describes as “10 cracking brains and super-talents with big hearts”, and also with her clients. “To me, each commission for a house – the brief and relationship – becomes an amazing generating force,” she says. She likens the experience to that of portraiture where the hand of the artist, and their signature style, is evident but the portrait couldn’t have been created without the individuality of the sitter.

A case in point is the Maher House designed for a client who is wheelchair-bound. The house is seamlessly beautiful, light and calm with the character of the bricks from the original bungalow retained and reused. One of Hannah’s skills is achieving apparent simplicity which belies the intellectual rigour she applies and complexities she contends with when designing a space. “The brief was that the disability aids would not be visible and I worked with the client’s occupational therapist to devise a space which functioned while not compromising the aesthetics,” says Hannah.

Unlike many contemporaries she has great affection for a genre of daggy brick houses from the 1940s, without apparent merit, but often defined by a certain eccentric expression. She enjoys teasing them apart to witness the narrative of their materiality and understand the work of long forgotten trades. “I graduated when ornament was a crime and so I’m fascinated with ornamentation, especially where it has a genuine relationship to the construction,” she says.

A project she undertook in Mosman had all the hallmarks of a Hannah Tribe project (I ask if she is ever stumped by what to do with a space and she is clearly motivated by the difficulty factor – “it makes me want to do it more,” she says). The house had great views and gardens but internally was a warren of rooms, which she opened up and carved volume out of the ceiling timbers for greater height. “It had been the client’s mother’s house and she was keen that we didn’t eradicate all the layers of the past – it was a balancing act,” she says.

Recent work has moved up a notch with a house for an Australian couple in Venice Beach, LA (negotiating Kafkaesque planning laws has been an eye-opener) and a restaurant project in Dubai collaborating with Alexander & Co. Closer to home in Sydney, she is working within a nine-storey industrial warehouse building to create a hotel/ apartment complex. And you can rest assured, whatever the nature of the project, the door hardware will outlast us all.

For more go to tribestudio.com.au; bitpart.com.au.