McBride Charles Ryan is designer of Australian Letterbox House. The reason why this building named “letter box” is the building begins as the letterbox and unfurls to become an irregular open verandah. It’s like a half space, half enclosed, half open. Neither in nor out – a new version of the good old Aussie verandah. Its like a giant multi-sensory organ, the sun, the sky, the breeze and the sound and smell of the sea – When you arrive here of an evening and stand here and see the stars, no matter how still it is, you smell the sea – suck it in, it transforms you, reminds you (of what matters), it’s a kind of tonic.

It makes people smile, a building with the smallest façade on the peninsula – the building begins as the letterbox and unfurls to become this healthy scaled verandah, to some it is an upturned boat, to others it a wave a cliff. We like it being many things – people stop and ask us, we just say it is what it is to you. We wanted to show respect – the peninsula needs it, and the scale here was modest beach suburban – we wanted to respect that scale – and yet as you walk along the deck the scale sneaks up on you – before you know it your immersed and surrounded by the scale of the house – a bit like life really. The peninsula is the place where you suspend formality and convention for a while – we wanted the building to do this and to remind you of that – it moves too far from architectural convention towards the other disciplines – that was the intention. It becomes ambiguous – What is it? Where is the front door? You don’t need a ‘front door’ in a holiday house – you just find your way in.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 7:01 am and is filed under Architecture Design. Tags: architectural convention towards, Australia, Blairgowrie, building with the smallest façade on the peninsula, designer of Australian Letterbox House, giant multi-sensory organ, half enclosed building, half open building, half space building, irregular open verandah, letter box building design, Letterbox House, McBride Charles Ryan, modest beach suburban, old Aussie verandah, quintessential Australian family life, wave a cliff building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.