To mark the release of Architecture at the Heart of the Home, we’re visiting the book’s striking cover star, Brush House by Melbourne-based practice Leeton Pointon Architects + Interiors.
Australian architecture and design dignitaries, writer, editor and speaker Jan Henderson and photographer Dianna Snape have captured 22 of the country’s best residential projects in their first coffee table book, Architecture at the Heart of the Home. The book explores homes of varying scale, highlighting the architectural details that make experiences within them unique. With each project expressing a pervading sense of place, the book emphasises architecture’s role in shaping our lives and meeting our need for comfort, safety and connection.
The Brush House by Leeton Pointon Architects + Interiors features on the cover and is emblematic of the book’s fundamental thread; ‘the role architecture can play in defining the heart of the home’. To celebrate the launch of Architecture at the Heart of the Home, we preview this Melbourne family home and learn how it turns the typical response to a Melbourne suburban block on its head.
The Brush House’s sweeping staircase features on the cover of Architecture at the Heart of the Home.
Light and fluidity are a harmonious force in the Brush House. A skylight at the entrance reflects the exterior’s curved motifs.
The southern side of the home features all of the functional parts along a ‘rational spine’.
While tailored to the family of five that lives there, the Brush House by Leeton Pointon Architects + Interiors considers how it contributes to its broader community, in a bid to give back to its surroundings and evoke curiosity in the passer-by. The Leeton Pointon Architects + Interiors team wanted to explore a continuous relationship with the landscape, where the front and rear gardens are one, maximising its presence, and how it can be cultivated.
Fluidity is revealed through the landscape’s relationship with the sculptural exterior and informs how the interiors interact with their surroundings. Inside, carved double-height openings frame the garden and filter light at different times of the day.
Leeton Pointon Architects + Interiors are widely praised for their signature, poetic curves that present through concrete forms. However, Brush House was a special case study in applying concrete – sculpted in a way that removes timber formwork. Leeton Pointon Architects + Interiors principal Michael Leeton credits a strong collaboration between architect, engineer and builder to achieve this simpler, more sustainable outcome.
Described by Michael Leeton as a ‘calm refuge’, Brush House is a balance between concrete’s robustness and the softness of organic shapes and materials. While offering a backdrop to family life, the home makes a broader, thoughtful contribution to its streetscape.
Learn more about Leeton Pointon Architects + Interiors’ Brush House in Architecture at the Heart of the Home, published by Thames & Hudson.
Michael Leeton says Brush House explores a delicate balance between mass and weightlessness, form and light, robustness and elegance.
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