Visiting my nan’s condo in Northcliffe on the Gold Coast in the course of the Nineteen Nineties, I distinctly bear in mind passing a selected home as I walked to the surf at dawn. On quite a few events, our bodies have been sprawled out on the verandah and garden, quick asleep, a fallen keg a reminder of the night time earlier than. Right here, life was lived open air within the public realm. Little did I do know that this was the Cormie Home (1948) by Hayes and Scott and that Northcliffe had been an epicentre of experimental coastal structure by Geoffrey Pie, Karl Langer and Hayes and Scott.
Edwin Hayes had a childhood connection to the Gold Coast, having attended the Southport Faculty as a junior. Educated at Brisbane Central Technical Faculty, he accomplished his articles with E. M. Ford of Chambers and Ford between 1935 and 1938, and he labored for Emil Sodersten in Sydney in 1939. In 1946, he established Hayes and Scott with Campbell Scott, whom he had met at Chambers and Ford. Hayes’s dad and mom owned Greddens style boutique in Brisbane and have been lively within the native social scene, and it was by way of this household connection that Hayes received a number of commissions for homes on the Gold Coast.
Scott was educated on the College of Queensland and was uncovered to the work of Karl Langer, who was a lecturer there. Langer, who had led Peter Behrens’s Vienna studio earlier than emigrating to Australia in 1938, printed his seminal paper “Sub-tropical Housing” by way of the College of Queensland in 1944. Hayes and Scott shared Langer’s values on designing for local weather. Concurrently, the Case Examine Home Program was being launched in Los Angeles. This, alongside the work of different outstanding architects (together with Marcel Breuer) and worldwide publications of the time, closely influenced the observe.
In 1967, Neil McCowan, a neighborhood developer, bought 182 hectares of Southport Broadwater wetland, now generally known as Runaway Bay. Numerous peninsulas of reclaimed sand have been shaped, with public parkland to the east adjoining the broadwater and, to the west, canal-front allotments. This association established a singular situation of connection to water on two sides. Marguerite and Gregory Cavill bought allotment 42. Greg, grandson of James “Jim” Cavill, the founding father of the Surfers Paradise Resort (1924), was publican on the Breakfast Creek Resort and based Tangalooma Resort on Moreton Island. A talented sailor, he was commodore of the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron and had a selected ardour for restoring boats.
Cavill and Hayes shared frequent social circles and had collaborated professionally at Tangalooma. In 1977, Greg and Marguerite commissioned Hayes to design a everlasting residence for his or her household of 5 kids and, by 1978, Cavill Home was full.
The entry
Entry to Cavill Home is by way of a gate that accesses a raised, walled courtyard set again from the road, generously providing panorama to the general public realm. Arriving by way of this outside area heightens the expertise of the location and reinforces the connection to local weather.
The courtyard
The sheltered courtyard supplies privateness to the north whereas sustaining entry to moderated pure gentle and air flow for the adjoining bedrooms and dwelling areas. It additionally establishes a threshold to the general public realm, allowing informal surveillance of the road and views to the water past. The courtyard partitions visually prolong and undertaking the inner areas externally – an concept influenced by the observe’s preoccupation with the work of Breuer.
The plan
Diagrammatically, the home is a T, centrally pivoted round a bar. Referencing Cavill’s hospitality roots, this bar companies the courtyard to the north, kitchen to the south and eating and lounge areas to the west. Bedrooms are organized to the east and north-west, with semi-detached and externally accessed bunkhouses positioned on an higher stage offering for versatile dwelling preparations. The compact plan maximizes entry to pure gentle and air flow and punctiliously moderates privateness and prevailing breezes; the home has no airconditioning. The plan supplies for a number of layers of exterior habitation relying on the climate and, like Langer’s planning prototypes, considers using the entire web site.
The storage
The location has distinctive views to entrance and rear water. Hayes cleverly maintained these views and public interplay by minimizing the visible impression of the automobile to the road. Built-in into the panorama, the northern aspect driveway preserves entry to gentle and to the storage and canal. The storage additionally capabilities as a retailer for boating tools and was used for the ritual relaunch events for restored boats, full with accompanying piper on the bunkhouse balcony above.
The roof
The roof is a single horizontal airplane with giant eaves, punctuated by clerestory pop-ups adjoining to the lounge, ensuite and kitchen. The ceiling airplane establishes a home spatial high quality whereas the clerestories present spatial variance, high-level air flow and entry to moderated pure gentle. The continuation of the ceiling externally expands the inner sense of area exterior whereas moderating gentle and shading the partitions and glass. This technique displays the affect of Gordon Banfield and demonstrates the importance of the roof as a key spatial, climatic and organizing aspect within the work of Hayes and Scott.
The supplies
The inside is tectonically wealthy, offering a number of layers of texture. The moderated gentle and use of timber and painted brick exudes a way of heat and luxury, considerably harking back to a ship cabin. Externally, the home is modest and robustly detailed, with navy blue used on the roof as a graphic distinction to the brilliant blue sky.
Cavill Home affirms Hayes and Scott’s means to execute modest, compact and climatically astute housing. It’s materially sincere and structurally rigorous but additionally reveals a way of playfulness. The home is finely tuned for comfy engagement with the town’s fantastic local weather, atmosphere and ensuing outside tradition. It clearly manifests the canon of concepts developed all through the lifetime of the observe. In 1962, Robin Boyd singled out Hayes and Scott as regional modernists reinterpreting the native vernacular – he was completely proper.
Present house owners Annette and Richard Barnes bought Cavill Home in 1991 as mutual lovers of water and boats. The home, which stays in immaculate situation, has nurtured their three kids and now presents as a mannequin for ageing in place – comfy sufficient for 2 on the bottom stage however simply tailored to accommodate seven when their household visits. In a metropolis grappling with the continuing menace to its cultural heritage, the Barneses are mannequin custodians for find out how to worth, take care of and protect a metropolis’s architectural heritage, and their love for his or her house is reassuring.
Writer’s word: The creator want to thank Peter Cavill, Richard Barnes and Annette Barnes for his or her help in recollecting the historical past of Cavill Home. Andrew Wilson’s ebook Hayes and Scott: Publish-war Homes (Brisbane: College of Queensland Press, 2005) was used as a reference throughout analysis for this text.