House Fitzgerald

14 years in the MAKING:

And that is the most apt description of what became a critical part of one’s practice and everyday thought. An exploration of materials and craft resulted in a project of which every component was designed, refined and manufactured by hand. 

With a client passionate about detail, quality and mid-century modern furniture and design it was quite a challenge in 2010, when we started the project. With project number 2010-01 it became a labour of love with many detail iterations and refinements over the 14 year period it took to get the building to the stage where we can actually predict a completion date. 

The building is a result of close collaboration between various craftsman and designers. Finding harmony in the passage of time and knowledge gained through parallel project exploration.

Apart from the sculptural, Heideggerian qualities and expressionist character, the conceptual and formal exploration led to a building which is built within the city fabric; thus the positioning of the structure closer to the street but elevated to be part of the city, but to also create privacy away from the city. 

Essentially an L-shaped building, the building inhabits the site to realise the entire site’s latent potential of becoming a home with integrated indoor-outdoor spaces. Tiered courtyards form outdoor rooms with the landscape changing as it terraces down from the intimate “Fairy Garden” to a “Mediterranean” courtyard and eventually ending on street level in a formal foraging space. Each with a distinct relationship to the building which has been designed to activate the site as a HOME.