The first house concept designs from the architect

The first concept designs are now in!

Reproduced below is Neal-the-Architect's email, together with the initital designs.

"We have had a first go at distilling your briefing requirements and our conversations into something a bit more tangible.
Integral to this is a considered response to the qualities of place that make the site so special to you.
This is to get the conversation going, so don’t hold back with comments if you think something doesn’t fit with your thoughts.

SITE CONCEPT

The first drawing is very conceptual and seeks to convey an overall strategy for placing the house on the site and how you might move across and experience the landscape in which it is located.

Even though it is a bit blurry, I hope you can see (just)how movement is guided over and down between two wings of the house in order to capture a sense of living within the cliff face and moving between the rock formations.

The main idea is that the house is tucked into the hillside and almost becomes incidental in the experience of the landscape, with the roof forms the only sign of habitation from above.

FLOOR PLANS
The next 2 drawings are less abstract and are a first attempt at synthesizing the essential character of the site concept into something vaguely buildable; Consider them more as diagrams though, rather than a building.
Apart from thinking about whether the site strategy works for you, can you please also consider if the room relationships are generally ok.
The house is set on two levels, with the upper level forming an entry court containing a carport.
Passing by an open light court, a stair negotiates a crevice between two forms to reach a terrace on the lower level which leads to the front door.
The obvious downside to this strategy is that there is no continuous covered path from carport to the front door, but it does set up an intriguing entry sequence.
Entering from behind, the main living pavilion contains Lounge, Kitchen and Dining spaces and faces north-east. Studios and wet areas are tucked into the hillside either side of the light court, which can also be used as a contained cat run J.
The Bedroom faces down the site and is separated from The Android's studio by the walk-in-robe. Room sizes are not strictly accurate, but close enough to see if we are on the right track.

The design tries to deal with the bushfire management issues by placing defensive walls towards the likely fire fronts where possible.

We will need to discuss further where it might be best to consider fire-shutters or toughened glass windows.
Mindful of cost issues, now would be a good time to consider further the merits of negotiating with one builder against tendering to a number of builders.
I think it is important to get a better feel now for how the relative remoteness of the site and access difficulties might impact on likely costs before progressing the design too much further.
It would obviously be good to talk to you both together to go over the drawings. Can you consider how this can best be achieved and get back to me please.

Regards

NEAL MACKINTOSH

MANAGING DIRECTOR

JAWSARCHITECTS"

What do you think??!

Interlude: tristis tempora feles

The good ship Terra Nova (Viktoria and the Android's time machine, in case you hadn't guessed) has experienced a bout of mysterious illnesses which have struck down two of the ship's cats in as many weeks.
Poor Captain Greatpants...

...had rapid onset bladder blockage with some weird protein-matrix. He has been hospitalised this past week with a catheter stitched into place and an IV in his arm.

He was due to have the catheter removed today but, despite sporting a fashionable plastic Elizabethan collar, managed to pull it out himself during the night (no doubt trying to save his mum and dad the cost of yet another anaesthetic).

And Miss Daintyfeet...

... has had acute pancreatitis which required blood tests, antibiotics and pain relief. Fortunately, her added girth saved her as she lost half her body weight in two days.
Naturally, there is no known cause for either condition. Why would cats make anything simple for their human servants? So we have no idea what we can do to prevent any recurrence. The only thing we can do is remain vigilant, which is what saved their lives in the first place.
Which leaves Mistress Surly at the helm while the others recover....

We hope Captain Greatpants and Miss Daintyfeet are feeling better real soon.

The finalised building site

Last week, Neal-the-Architect sent us the latest survey report.
At 5:30pm on a Friday.
This is a little snapshot of the survey:

The whole survey represents only a very small part of our 57acres.

• The house site is a little to the north of the "Reference Gum" - a Tasmanian Blue Gum with a diametre of at over 60cm and about 30metres tall - the house will be cut into the small ledge you can see delinated by the survey lines
• The dog-legged straight lines show the gravel road 43.57metres and 38.26meters on either side of the surveyed plot
• Where the survey lines end is the edge of the cliff. It is much higher than our initial choice of building location, but still comprised of the same amazing Jurassic dolerite rock formations:

All this means that (all things going to plan) Neal-the-Architect has spent the past few days sketching out the initial schematic designs.

We are trying very hard to not pre-empt what the design will look like....

The second hurdle... still pleasing the experts

We are beginning to creep forward, inch by inch...which is still an improvement of 2 steps forward and 3 steps back.
Following on from Neal-the-Architect's second meeting with the bushfire consultant, we now have tentative agreement to let us build on the cliff. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Neal's friend Mark, who also attended the meeting with his experience in Tasmanian Fire Service in his armoury.
So what the bushfire consultant has said is that if we build to Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) 40 with clearing around the building envelop to the level of BAL-29, then we should be able to do it.
However, we noticed that his assessment was based on a building envelope of 400m2... and given that we are only looking at a building envelope one quarter that size, his estimate may be overconservative.
So... we are back to getting further land surveying done.
Once John has the results of the further land surveys, we will be able to finalise a building site.
When a building site is decided on.... Neal can actually start designing!!!!!
And THEN, once we have a basic design, Neal can take this back to the bushfire consultant a third time to confirm the appropriate clearance and construction requirements in line with the relevant BAL for a house of that size.
The Android is already looking frowny... he is concerned about his potential inability to envisage a finished building from initial designs...

Viktoria doesn't think the Android's visualisation capabilities are as limited as he thinks. Still... this could be the next phase of our own personal development on the journey...

Interlude: mortem in nocte

Driving home at night, Viktoria and the Android came across a Tawny Frogmouth hunched in the middle of the road near their home.
Often mistaken for owls, Tawny Frogmouths are more closely related to nightjars, not raptors. Their main defence is to close their large orange eyes and pretend to be a tree branch. If this fails, they will open wide their mouths and hiss.
This particular Tawny did neither, only briefly flapping its wings when approached on foot.
Tawnies are territorial, and we feared it was one of the family group that Viktoria had only recently photographed in the back yard.

The Android was able to pick it up easily - never a good sign with a wild bird. A few feathers fluttered loose, but we found no obvious injury. Still, given where it was found, it had most likely been hit by a car, the driver not stopping to help the injured bird.
Not wanting to leave it to be struck by another vehicle or taken by a dingo, we wrapped it up carefully in a towel and took it home. During the short journey, it wriggled in Viktoria's lap, muttering quietly to itself.
We positioned it carefully in a box in a darkened room, hoping that if it was merely stunned it could recover in peace and we could release it.
After feeding the feline hoard and ourselves, we sneaked into the room to check on our unexpected noctural visitor.
Its orange eyes were closed. Its head hung limp and lifeless. Sometime in the intervening hour, it had died.
We dug a deep hole and buried it near where the photograph had been taken.
Sleep peacefully, beautiful bird.
For you, this journey has ended.

A Weekend at Home with the Architect

Sunday last dawned a glorious day.
The sky a perfect cerulean blue, the local wildlife in magnificent display, the live-in felines relatively well behaved. Even Viktoria (not renouned for her domesticity) managed to not screw up lunch - a rolled lamb roast, stuffed with blue-vein cheese with a salad of mixed leaves, chickpeas, fetta, chargrilled capsicum and green beans, if you were wondering.
The Android drove down to the city to pick up our architect, Neal, from his hotel in the morning and brought him up to our home.
As the second meeting with the bushfire consultant had yet to occur, we sadly couldn't force Neal to sketch any designs for us. Neal too, seemed frustrated at the turn of events.
But he did get to experience how and where we live, and see all the furniture and other paraphernalia we plan on taking with us to our, as yet, mythical home in Tasmania.
In short, we had a lovely, relaxing day with Viktoria and the Android happily confirming that they both liked Neal also as a person, and not just for his architectural acumen.
Later in the week, Neal telephoned Viktoria following to much anticipated second meeting with the bushfire consultant and Neal's friend from the Tasmanian Fire Service.
After securing a promise from Viktoria that she wouldn't start doing backflips just yet, Neal advised that the outcome of the meeting was something along the lines of:

• If we would agree to build the house to a BAL-40 level, and
• If we would agree to prepare the land around the building site to a BAL-29, and
• If he was satisfied with yet another proposed site ontop of the escarpment
• THEN the bushfire consultant would be prepared to sign off on the site.

So it's not quite a 'yes' (yet) but nor is it exactly a 'no'.
Neal will accompany the bushfire consultant out to the site again next week, with strict instructions to get the man's written confirmation agreeing with the above points in blood - and it will hopefully be on a site that Neal is happy with (as Viktoria and the Android both know that if Neal is happy, then we most definitely will be too).
All this administrative agony made us wonder how folk with a land mortgage coped - in Australia, most loans taken out on vacant land require the mortgagee to build on that land within either six or 12 months. It's actually written into the contract. We engaged JAWSarchitects in March. Nearly three months later, and we are still unravelling the red tape to get all parties to agree to where we can simply put the house. We don't even have a design, much less be in a position to commence building within three months. How do people do it?
We are very appreciative of the fact that we have something of the luxury of time on our hands, as we don't have any mortgage over the land. So even though these meetings are costing us more, we believe the expense worth it. If we were sitting in our new home a few years from now wondering "what if" we had just pushed a little harder to get the site we really wanted...we know we would have wished then that we had tried just once more. But if a bank won't let you have the time to do that... then what??

TIP: If you can afford the time, it's worth having a second attempt at getting what you want.

We had every intention to zip forward a week to discover outcome of that meeting and thus put ourselves out of the misery of waiting. Unfortunately, the timemachine has a dodgy flux capacitor at the moment, so it seems likely we will just have to wait until we hear back from Neal...

Building in bushfire prone areas - new laws, new confusion

As Viktoria and the Android have mentioned previously, Australia is introducing new laws regulating where you build and the type of building you construct, in relation to "bushfire prone areas".

The problem is (like so many government initiatives worldwide) that nationwide regulations are being overlaid on existing (and often very different) State- and Region-specific legislation.  At the present time, there is not even a consistent nationwide definition of what a "bushfire prone area" is.  And yet, the regulations set out in the Australian Building Code and National Construction Code are meant to be applied equally.

Can anyone see a problem with that?

Suffice to say, if you are looking at building on a piece of land in Australia, and you want to know whether it is considered to be "Bushfire Prone" and you can't locate a government map as not all States have conducted bushfire mapping, the following definition may apply (at today's date):

BUSHFIRE PRONE AREA means an area of land which is subject, or likely to be subject to bushfires, being any area of land within 100metres of a single area of vegetation of greater than 1 hectare

1. a bushfire prone area does not include land over 20metres from a strip of vegetation less than 20metres in width regardless of length; and
2. areas of vegetation separated by less than 20metres are to be considered as a contiguous area of vegetation for the purposes of defining a bushfire prone area.

Our own unique problem with this new legislation appears to stem from the fact that we want to build on a cliff.  The bushfire consultant has said "no" due to the degree of slope of the cliff (like, you know, it's a cliff).

Where it gets confusing is because the Australian Standards are silent on the issue of building near a slope with a > 40 degree incline. We believe that the bushfire consultant's assumption that, in the absence of any specific regulation, the site must therefore be disallowed, is incorrect.

Tasmania has not, to date, declared bushfire-prone areas for the purposes of the Australian Building Code. The Building Act 2000 therefore, does not currently require that the construction of residential buildings in areas susceptible to bushfires be built to the standard required under the Australian Building Code.

Further, one would think that a reasonable person would expect that there should be greater flexibility applied to buildings being considered on existing titles compared to new titles. To do otherwise would unduly impact on the value of existing titles. Ours is an existing title.

The Tasmanian Fire Service's Guidelines for Development in Bushfire Prone Areas of Tasmania 2005 is the only document currently formally referenced or relied upon by the majority of planning schemes in Tasmania. Within that document, it states that buildings on slopes, which are cut into the slope will be momre sheltered during a bushfire. Buildings on slabs on the ground are also considered the safest.

Our intention is to build a home on a slab on the ground and cut into the slope.

TIP: Given that new Australian regulations on building and construction in relation to bushfires are only likely to become tougher - always involve a bushfire consultant very early in the design and development process.

Our architect neal has one more meeting scheduled for next week with the bushfire consultant to see if there is any way we can build on our chosen site.

How would you rate our chances??

We'll let you know how things turn out...