Inspiration

Emerging architects Liz Walsh and Alex Nielsen have been busy launching their newly formed lutruwita/Hobart practice, SO:Architecture. Taking a nontraditional approach, SO:Architecture offers a highly collaborative design process, placing value on slow architecture and welcoming clients to challenge the brief to help understand and reveal opportunities within the design process. Using this method in their first project completed under the newly formed studio, Harriet’s House embodied the thought, collaboration, care, and high level of craft the project demanded to achieve its award-winning results. Located in Launceston on the lands of the Stoney Creek Nation, Tasmania, the extension to the heritage-listed Georgian cottage seamlessly combines two materials; locally sourced brick and Tasmanian Timber, strategically linking the project to place and the state’s proud manufacturing history.

Melbourne architect Wilko Doehring has always held a long appreciation for modernist architecture. Born in Germany, his admiration for the Bauhaus movement translated to a love for Australia’s adaptation of mid-century architecture. So, when a light-filled property in Melbourne’s Beaumaris neighbourhood came onto the market, he and his wife acted quickly to secure one of its prized mid-century dwellings. As with many homes in this suburb, the three-bedroom house was compact, yet meticulously designed for maximum efficiency. Stripping the home to its core without compromising the integrity of its original charms, the couple were pleased to uncover Tasmanian Oak as the feature timber chosen nearly seventy years prior.

Studio ZAWA is a Sydney-based architecture studio formed by architects Brian Zulaikha and Colebee Wright. With a focus on creating residential projects that boast texture, quality and craftsmanship, their latest project, Darling Point Apartment, fulfills this ethos- and then some. With a lifetime of travels and treasures to inform the brief for the reconfiguration of the 60s era apartment, a unique yet carefully restrained palette of materials makes up the sleek interior that reflect some of the client’s most cherished moments.

Originally built in Hobart’s Battery Point neighbourhood in 1914, Laroona House required an update that would accommodate modern living, while retaining the charm and history of the Federation Arts and Crafts style architecture of the home. The extension and alteration needed to create a more functional space, which was achieved by opening the interior up to create better flow and harmony between rooms with an infusion of natural light and a cohesive integration to the backyard garden. Honouring the existing material palette and period features, Hobart architecture studio Biotope Architecture and Interiors, selected Tasmanian Oak to help form a minimal yet warm and cozy connection between the old and new.

Following the opening of the University of Tasmania’s Inveresk Library by Wardle in early 2022, the second major building in the Northern Transformation Program is now complete. Designed as a pairing to the Willis Street Building, “The Shed”, to be completed in 2024, the latest building opened to students, staff, and the Tasmanian public in July 2023. With its sleek geometric lines and industrial exterior referencing the existing architecture of the area, the interior reveals a delightfully unexpected material palette. The brief and goals of the project required a material low in embodied carbon, a material that would challenge the traditional aesthetic of institutional settings and one that would support local Tasmanian jobs and businesses. The material chosen for meeting and surpassing these requirements? Tasmanian Oak.

Creating a handful of beautifully considered and finely constructed projects across the state of Tasmania, emerging architect Saxon Hall has been busy honing his craft in architecture & design for the last decade. Prior to establishing his own part-time practice Saxon Hall Architecture, Hall previously worked at one of Hobart’s leading architecture studios Morrison & Breytenbach Architects, where his inspiration to explore the limits and applications of Tasmanian Oak was ignited. Collaborating with a breadth of designers and tradespeople on his latest project, We Ponder House, Hall’s passion for using products low in embodied energy called for the use of Tasmanian Oak. Sustainability was also top of mind. As a nod to the state’s extensive use of the prized local timber in agriculture sheds that spot the scenic landscape – Tasmanian Oak was used for the home’s exterior but done with a modern and abstract twist.