Why can’t architecture be more like nature -- changeable, varied, and uninhibited?  Our client wanted to return home and feel a sense of private freedom, a release from the conformity of the world outside.  In this project, we softened her existing Modernist house by infusing it with an atmosphere of clouds.  The clouds scatter freely throughout the house, and dissolve and soften it in different ways. 

The clouds erode and blur the order of the rational modernist grid, creating a sense of space that floats and drifts.  Moments of softness are encountered unexpectedly – the interventions are like a mist that has settled unevenly.  The softness dissolves the entry, melts the stairs, wafts through the house on all three floors, and a lonely cloud is trapped above a sheltered terrace. 

Team:
Architect: OPA – Zoë Prillinger, Luke Ogrydziak, principals-in-charge; Yuki Bowman, project architects; Dave Bowen, project team
Client: Gary and Somusa Ng
Contractor: FGC
Photography: Naaro & Joe Fletcher