Brisbane-based architecture firm NIELSEN JENKINS is becoming known for residential projects that celebrate the possibilities of raw materials

Brisbane architecture studio NIELSEN JENKINS began after a long engagement, with the two architects working together on projects for several years before finally launching their firm. Lachlan Nielsen was working for Kevin O’Brien Architects and Morgan Jenkins for Phorm Architecture + Design when Nielsen asked Jenkins to come and work on a ‘complex table’ for a private job.

The two developed a friendship and later a business built on ideas around the construction and assembly of architecture, both travelling around the world and experiencing alternative ideologies that could be applied to their hometown’s quintessential housing typology: the Queenslander.

At the heart of each of the studio’s projects is a return to form and the economics of how buildings come together, using Nielsen’s building capabilities to drive the materiality. ‘We really like to show the materials that a project is built from,’ Jenkins says, ‘and we select materials that don’t require maintenance and are efficient by minimising the use of finishing trades.’

‘Queensland has a long history of timber construction, and often the materiality of a work responds to the existing buildings,’ Jenkins says. With a palette of brick, timber, tin and concrete, plus beautiful glossy tiles that reflect each project’s surrounding ocean or bush, the raw materiality reveals and honours the craft of construction, ensuring the projects are durable and low maintenance — something necessary in the wet Queensland climate. ‘What we’re trying to do is to minimise the maintenance on these buildings so the garden can just take over and the building can settle into the landscape. The building should look its worst on the day of handover and keep getting better over time,’ he explains.

Landscape is given as much consideration as the built components of a project, and Nielsen and Jenkins have integrated a landscape architect into their team to make the landscape design an integral part of the overall scheme. ‘A lot of our clients engage with the gardens, courtyards and external spaces just as much as they do the building,’ says Nielsen. ‘It’s so good to have a landscape architect in our team, to get them out there early and to have the site considered as a whole rather than as separate built and unbuilt elements.’

Concrete, timber and bricks juxtapose with the lush foliage that spills into every vista. A case in point is their recent project, Mount Coot-Tha House in Brisbane. Built on a steep bush site, the house had to be designed to conform with the area’s severe bushfire regulations, but the picture window views out to the canopy still connect it to the larger site. ‘All the rooms relate to lush courtyards immediately adjacent, but they all have high windows that pick up the canopy of the bushland up the hill,’ says Nielsen.

With each project grounded in place and unique to the brief, the duo’s designs showcase the possibilities of raw materials. The architects reveal the merits of simple, considered forms that return to an honesty of construction and sit as a backdrop to nature’s own green thumb.

Facing page, top At Mount Coot-Tha House, bushfire-safe materials juxtapose with foliage, and picture window views to the canopy maintain a connection with nature Images by Tom Ross Facing page, bottom Another project saw the team renovate and extend a traditional Queenslander to create a series of indoor and outdoor spaces that maintained the owners’ privacy in the face of new housing developments and offered new internal connections in a previously insular space Images by Shantanu Starick This page Lachlan Nielsen (left) and Morgan Jenkins worked on projects together for several years before making the decision to launch their studio Image by Shantanu Starick