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inspiration for the project: the architect's
and the client's mutual interest in the
coastal concrete bunkers of Denmark
and Australia. "You can't really suggest
to someone to do a house like a bunker,
but we both realized—and it was a bit
of a watershed moment—that we really
loved them and all thought it was a great
idea," says Stockwell of the concept. If
these stout military fortresses helped
safeguard against bombs and attack,
then an earth-integrated solution would,
he reasoned, protect the architecture from
the area's severe rainstorms and bushfire
while simultaneously helping to preserve
the landscape and enhance biodiversity.
Moreover, a residential shelter half-buried
into the hillside minimizes its exposure
to fluctuations in temperature. All were
mbedded into a rock edge
on a sloped site in Newcastle,
Australia, the residential wonder
Bunkeren, by Sydney-based
architect James Stockwell, takes
shape as a kind of hanging
garden, with its sequence of concrete
volumes descending methodically down
the drop until the whole miraculous
project comes to rest, suspended over
the edge. However precariously placed
the house appears, however, it is one of
solidity and permanence, bound to the
earth and shrouded in flourishing rooftop
gardens that make the architecture
almost indistinguishable from the broader
landscape, as if one day, perhaps, the
place might be completely overrun by
nature—returned to the cradle from which
it came.
That the concrete volumes are not meant
to be the first thing one sees on approach
of the house is a byproduct of the
26 DIGS.NET
| 6.16.23
