Secret Garden House has been Transformed into a Delightful and Comfortable Home

The Secret Garden House is a modest monocrete house that has been transformed into a delightful and comfortable home charged with a new lease of life. Central to the client’s brief for the project were the requirements for repair and for retreat.

With the original house having succumbed to significant condensation issues, an ambition to repair without material removal of the original structure was mutually established. Reflecting adept ability, skilful detailing of the internal walls has resolved the underlying construction issues while judiciously retaining the integrity of both structure and building footprint. The more apparent aspects of the interior fit-out - presenting as a series of enticingly subtle insertions – complete a revived interior in which every detail demonstrates astute consideration and restraint.

The architect’s approach to the provision of privacy is a true delight – a gesture as bold as it is quirky. Balancing concealment with connectivity, a timber screen, located to support a new entrance threshold, cloaks the length of the existing facade. Conceptually derived from one of the client’s own artworks, the screen has been designed to support a dynamic array of foliage – a vertical garden serving to not merely conceal, but to mediate light and view.

Deeply considered and highly responsive to the client’s needs, CCJ Architects has delivered an impressively clever and memorable project. 

The Secret Garden House exemplifies the profound effect that art can have in the enhancement of architecture. Here, art is not applied, but integrated so deeply in the architectural expression that it manifests not only in the physical, but in the abstract and the temporal. It is a living and evolving manifestation of art in architecture – deeply connected to both inhabitant and place.

In Secret Garden House, the inclusion of art is personal, with the concept for a vertical garden screening the length of the house generating from one of the clients’ own paintings – Spring in the Mountain. The painting reflects an interest in the vegetal and the mineral and in the ways in which materials can be used to evoke sensations associated with experiences of the natural world.

Casting the mind forward, it is easy to imagine a future in which, camouflaged by dense and vivid foliage, the house will augment the street – delighting the passer-by with its abundant and playful presence, and indeed, evoking the senses.