SCOTIA HOUSE

SCOTIA HOUSE AUCHENFLOWER, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

Scotia House weaves a series of courtyards and contemporary rooms around a classic 20th century timber house in Brisbane. Garden courtyards formalise the steep terrain and deliver to the interior, light, breezes and outlook. The curation of the landscape to exist in harmony with the architecture, intensifies opportunities to engage in the dichotomy of prospect and refuge, enclosure and exposure. The fluid relationship between interior and exterior realms spurs an unfolding journey through the domestic landscape. The architecture explores concrete as a medium to create large, open spans and to bind together, interior and exterior realms. New additions grafted onto the existing cottage, frame the edges to the courtyard and formalise the negative space of the garden. In this way the central courtyard garden acts as a companion to interior rooms and encourages a life lived outside. Large sliding glass doors, concealed within wall cavities, further promote this fluid relationship between the natural and man-made.