Located in regional, coastal Victoria, Layer House is close to the beach yet doesn’t have ocean views. The client’s brief was to create a large family home to accommodate guests and family members at the one time, a quality, robust home to withstand generations. Contextually sensitive, the house is built with local materials and techniques. The two main materials are timber and rammed earth. The walls were built by local artisans with sand that was locally sourced, while the roof’s sweeping timber form floats effortlessly over the building, creating a balance between solidity and lightness, enclosure and openness.
Selecting a simple, pale palette of timber, rammed earth and concrete, we added strategic graphic insertions to excite and delineate the interior. Materials are honest and efficient, require little maintenance and will age gracefully. The green tiled island bench incorporates a hardwearing commercial grade tile sourced from artisan makers in Italy. The aluminium doors and windows are double glazed and thermally broken with louvres for cross ventilation and hydronic heating that evenly heats the concrete floor in the winter, and the external timbers will grey off, adding another layer of patina over time.
