Noosa Hinterland Q Australia – Bark Design
- Royal Australian Institute of Architects: Sunshine Coast Building of the Year
- Royal Australian Institute of Architects: Beatrice Hutton Award for Commericial Building Architecture
- Australian Steel Institute: Architectural Steel Design State Award 2003.
Photography: Christopher Frederick Jones; Shannon McGrath, Peter Hyatt, Vincent Long
It’s a big decision to start working from home but imagine taking your workforce home with you. That’s exactly what architectural duo, Stephen Guthrie and Lindy Atkin, did when they built their home office. Sitting adjacent to the family home, on an acreage lot, the office sits on a ridge with views over the hinterland through to the Pacific Ocean.
Apart from the obvious lifestyle and financial advantages, we’re confident that whole team productivity would be high given the fresh air, open views and lack of the usual interruptions present in most commercial environments.
From the architects:
The Bark Studio is a modest building, which functions as a flexible work space for the design team of eight people.
Developing from a desire for flexibility between work and living, this modernist steel and glass pavilion showcases Bark’s design approach and provides an inspiring work environment.
Perched on four steel footings to slot between two mature Bloodwoods, the modular 20 metre long structure of steel portal frames is encased with openable and fixed glazing on three sides. The fourth façade, a plywood-clad box, provides privacy, protection from western sun, and a desired ambiguity of perceived use.
The main linear workspace was conceived as an open verandah, with compactly scaled service spaces ‘plugging in’ along its length. From the main studio, folded plywood stairs sweep past the large ‘shopfront’ window box where models of past and current projects are displayed. A mezzanine serves as a retreat by accommodating architecture books, quiet reading, sleeping or bathing. The solidity of its form is punctured by glass slots, providing cropped horizontal views of hinterland and coast.
In a semi rural situation the building needed to be a self contained environment and a demonstration that with appropriate site specific design and technology, knowledge based professionals such as Architects can successfully work in a sustainable alternative to the urban studio environment.
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