The Lovie House at 7 Tennant Place, Jerrabomberra, was designed and built by Geoff Lovie in 1998. The colourful house has attracted attention and many curious onlookers to this suburb of Queanbeyan, located about 10km from Canberra’s centre.

The house is an excellent and unique (in the Canberra area) example of the late twentieth century post-modern style with its outgoing approach to forms, materials and colour. The house won an RAIA Merit Award in 1998.

Description

Entry is at ground level, with the simple front door sheltered from above by a bright yellow protruding volume which is part of the upper living and dining area. Two sleeping areas are on the lower level while the kitchen, dining and living areas are on the upper level. The cooking and dining area is separated from the living area by the staircase well, which is in the center of the house.

Taking advantage of the sloping site, a wooden bridge and deck area links the upper level of the house to the garden at the rear.

The aim of the design has been to simplify the functions of the house by maximising space and reducing the number of interior fittings and fixtures. There are no corridors, multiple bathrooms or defined, formal dining spaces.

The house is cost and energy efficient and friendly to the environment. The strong use of colour on the exterior provides an effective contrast with the inside of the house, which makes extensive use of natural timbers.

Further reading

• The late twentieth century post-modern style

The house at 34 Fihelly Street, Fadden (also known as the Pepper House) was designed by Philip Cox in 1983. It is one of a small number of domestic scale buildings in Canberra designed by Cox, others being the Jerilderie Court Housing (1975) and the Embassy of Ireland (1975).

The house is sited backing the McArthur Hill Canberra Nature Park with views to the Brindabella Ranges. The form of the surrounding hills is echoed in the three curved roof pavilions of the house and garage.

Extensive glazing to the front and north of the house takes advantage of these views, while walls siding the adjoining properties (east and west) are largely without glazing to afford privacy. The glazing and massiveness of the walls provides a contrast with the extensive trelliswork on the balustrades.

The Pepper House displays aspects of the late twentieth century post-modern style, including references to vernacular architecture and materials with the use of trelliswork, bullnosed corrugated iron verandahs and double pitched roofs.

The house displays Cox’s characteristic concern with the relationship between the building and its landscape.

Sources and further reading

• Australian Architects: Philip Cox, RAIA Education Division, Red Hill, 1984
• The late twentieth century post-modern style
• Philip Cox’s Jerilderie Court Housing

One of the central pillars of modernism was to remove traditional forms of building and decoration from architecture: cubiform buildings with flat roofs replaced pillars and gables. Yet, despite the dominance of the international style in the post-war period, some architects became concerned with the standardised approach of much modern architecture, its deliberate rejection of history and (in some instances) failure to produce an appropriate social context for the inhabitants of the many apartment blocks being produced in the style.

In the early 1960s some American architects began taking a renewed interest in historical forms for the purposes of ornamentation. At the forefront of this movement was Robert Venturi, whose book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) laid the foundations for post-modern architectural theory. Rather than simply refer back to pre-modernist architectural styles, Venturi sought to propose an alternative to what he saw as the boring and lower quality branches of modernism that had developed.

In Australia, the style developed somewhat later but along the same lines as the United States and Europe. The post-modern style came to be characterised by recognisable references to aspects of historical or vernacular architecture. Buildings that quoted classical details and art deco motifs were common. Also evident was a concern for the character and scale of the building’s environment. The Lovie house is a rare Canberra-area residential example.

Features

• Reliance on motifs from other styles
• Deliberate placement of incompatible geometries
• Outgoing and colourful character
• References to aspects of historical or vernacular architecture
• Materials such as corrugated iron, dichromatic brickwork used referentially
• Traditional and modern construction techniques juxtaposed for effect
• References to the form or detail of adjacent buildings

On this site

• Lovie house, 7 Tennant Place, Jerrabomberra. Geoff Lovie, 1998.

Other examples in Australia

• Moonee Ponds Market, VIC. Gunn Hayball, 1981.
• Hackford House, Traralgon, VIC. Greg Burgess, 1982.
• University of Technology, Ultimo, NSW. Philip Cox and Partners, 1983.
• No 1 Collins Street, Melbourne. Denton, Corker, Marshall, 1984.
• Coopers and Lybrand Building, Sydney. Rice Daubney, 1987.