'Brutal but friendly': Arched design a lesson in restraint and understated beauty

When a young couple approached Nic Brunsdon to design a high-end house on a tight block (and even tighter budget) in North Perth, an idea hit the award-winning architect like a bolt out of the blue – arches.

No matter the direction you look, you spy arches: big and small – what Brunsdon labels “grand” and “pedestrian” – both parallel and perpendicular to the street, across the ground and upper floors.

“I have these moments every so often when everything synthesised, and the solution just emerges,” explains Brunsdon. “It’s like a 30-second sketch; it happens in a flash, like divine intervention, a lightning bolt.”

In mind already was the Tama Art University Library in Tokyo, which Brunsdon had visited during a study tour of Japan. The library, designed by Toyo Ito, is like a forest of concrete arches. As Brunsdon saw it, the building was sheltering but welcoming.

“It was brutal but friendly,” he says. “It struck me because the client wanted concrete … in a residential setting.”

With both land and budget constraints, Brunsdon landed on another bright idea: a lattice of interlocking precast concrete panels. “They’re a very commercial industrial material and application,” he argues. “That’s where the arches come in: to soften (the structure) so it has more of that humble residential scale and feeling.”

The concrete arches gave the owners the clean, minimalist design they sought and spoke to their respective Greek and Italian heritage. Crucially, too, the waffle pattern provided necessary structural stability.

But the arches perform other tasks, like enhancing a sense of space. Stepping through the mousehole-like entry, a double-height, light-filled vestibule initially draws the gaze skyward – as does the soaring main corridor when coming through the front door.

Moreover, you receive a view of the full length of the house to the rear garden, lured by a succession of pedestrian archways acting as thresholds, as you move deeper into the property and more private, intimate family areas.

Here, too, are the larger grand arches framing these spaces, such as the stage-like kitchen, dining room and lounge. “It’s all about slowing things down, revealing things step by step, so the house feels longer, the experience more considered,” says Brunsdon.

Up a flight of concrete steps, the arch motif continues. Perpendicular to the street are more grand and pedestrian arches, which can be observed from the ground but are best appreciated from the first floor, inviting extended glimpses south to the city and light from the north.

They also let you see wall-to-wall. As Brunsdon says: “You experience (the interiors) in their maximum length, so it doesn’t feel small or pokey.”

They add decorative flourishes, too, while bringing the material palette into play. In keeping with the overall design, Brunsdon purposely exercised restraint with his range of materials, paying respect to Japanese design principles: simplicity, asymmetry and precise, understated beauty.

Offsetting the raw concrete are timber and translucent polycarbonate sheeting. Timber elements create moments of intimacy and warmth throughout the house – from the walnut joinery in the kitchen and lounge, balustrading and stairs to the roof and downstairs ceilings.

Timber’s textural touch is there again in the arched forms of the wardrobe in the main sleeping quarters – one of three bedrooms – a bibliophile’s bookcase, bookended by study and leisure zone, or simply as a decorative inlay. “It’s about human interaction,” he argues.

Insulated polycarbonate screens arched windows along the first floor boundaries, allowing a soft, diffused light to flood the interiors, again boosting the sense of space.

Against this limited palette, Brunsdon introduces pops of colour: a deep forest green in the en suite and yellow and pink in the second bathroom.

He further combats the site’s compactness with a curved rooftop retreat, accessed via a glass hatch, offering heady full-circle prospects of Perth and the city centre.

In addition, Brunsdon produced a sustainable, passive solar design to maximise cost-efficiency and livability, with north-facing windows screened by concrete fins, insulated walls, cross ventilation, solar banks, rain harvesting and a native garden.

“It’s a small house with civic ambitions that punches above its weight,” says Brunsdon. “It’s about the quality of space.”

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8 Thompson Street, North Perth WA 6006

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“This home is an incredible opportunity … engaging a great architect. The house – with so much material mass, balanced with warmth and inviting family spaces – will excite buyers, as you don’t often see this calibre of home come to market,” says agent John Hunter of William Porteous Properties International.