IN THE CLEAR
An exposed structure and endless glass turn a 1950s former beach shack in Victoria into a blissfully immersive holiday home
Interior designer Andrew Parr is perfectly aware of the paradox inherent in designing a retreat away from design — practitioners can never switch off the impulse to improve the built world. No, but they can try to silence the Pavlovian triggers to the stress that emanates from doing it for others. According to Parr, a long-time director of SJB Interiors in Melbourne, the best holiday places are born of big vision, by which he doesn’t mean the metaphorical masterstroke of concept but a very literal provision for expanded view. “They make staring out the window an inescapable event,” he says. It’s the activity once deemed by moralists to be a mindless waste of time but one that the latest neuroscience says will lead to a greater ‘mindfulness’ — that all-important state of clear consciousness that incubates creativity and opens to innovation. “Isn’t that the end-game of a holiday — to get rid of all that mental clutter?” asks Parr. “In the city, my head is constantly in that go-go-go place. I can’t sit still, can’t relax; can’t stop the noise that impedes new ideas.” It’s why Parr and his partner, Stacey Pavlou, a hair salon owner with a like exposure to creative stress, long dreamed of owning a restorative bolt hole in Blairgowrie — the tiny township at the narrow tip of the Mornington Peninsula. “We looked at the back beach originally, because we both liked its ruggedness,” says Parr of their 2007 realestate reconnaissance. “We didn’t get stuck on a specific location, as long as the house had some character.” The couple found it in a late-1950s shack, the multi-level structure of which floated a fibro-faced living-room on a besser-block groundfloor that steeped all sleeping quarters into sunless abyss, above a clammy basement cellar. It exhibited all the form, frugal charm and colour exuberance of middle-class, postwar Modernism — red linoleum and loud prints — with the façade framed to display the family car and far-off Port Phillip Bay. “That was before the foreground foliage consumed the living-room views,” says Parr. “But the place had renovation potential — a steeply graded site with a habitable building nestled amidst a magnificent tangle of mature Moonahs.” This sculptural massing of Melaleuca lanceolata, bent by 60 years of weather, ultimately sold Parr and Pavlou on the property. “We loved the connection of architecture to that landscape,” says Pavlou. “We then lived in the house for the following four years before any ››
‹‹ renovations began — experiencing the seasons, resolving to maintain the spirit of the original residence and also levelling the lowest point of the land for a swimming pool.” According to Parr, that straight-up insertion of a waterhole, where a creek bed once ran, instantly changed the dynamic of the house from a shack to an entertaining spread and imposed specific pressures on the planning of a new addition. “We wanted stronger physical and visual connection to the outside,” he says, simplifying the ensuing complexity of alterations and additions down to the punching open of existing walls and the pushing out of a new glass pavilion at the east end of the north-facing structure. “The original house told us what to do, but we love the work of [US Modernist architect] Craig Ellwood and the way he dissolved structure into the Malibu air.” ››
‹‹ Referring to the autodidact Los Angeles architect who came to fame through the Case Study House Program, spearheaded by the US magazine Arts & Architecture from 1945 to 1966, Parr cites Ellwood’s 1956 Steinman house as the exemplar. He riffed on its open plan, expansive infills of glass and exposed structure until his little Blairgowrie house became one big, cosy out-the-window stare. The trick of Parr’s increased transparency relied on the incorporation of the old carport space into a refurbished entry level that rationalised all the guest facilities into a linear sequence of south-side sleeping cells. These rooms were designed to fully frame views to the outer thickets of Moonah and fill with ’50s-skewed furnishings. They now conceal their access within a seamless wall of cedar battens that march the length of a terrazzo-tiled hallway. This stepped-down spine, part-bound by bays of floor-to-ceiling glass framing garden and pool, connects old with new, ground with upper-treetop living and terminates at the door that delivers the surprise punch of the main suite. This crystalline complex of bed and bath, immersed in the tangle of surrounding trees, instantly induces the drop of shoulders. It is pure absolution of anxiety with an absolute regard for practicality. “If you want people to use a place, you must materially allow for it,” claims Parr, climbing to a living room level that is finished in structural blackbutt flooring and black Brazilian granite, the grain of which simulates waves on the kitchen splashback. “This is the real Craig Ellwood stuff — exposed beams, expressed structure, and the natural rhythms felt through endless glass.” Parr’s chilled demeanour would indicate that design can take a holiday, at least until the multi-award-winning practitioner starts reducing the number of ceramic vessels on a side bench. “Let’s get real,” he says of the compulsion to improve aesthetics. “The day that I stop caring is the day I’m dead.”
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