Welcome to Quandong Cottage

 
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Words–
Nat Woods
@nat.woods_

Photos–
Anna Hutchcroft
@annahutch_photo

Muse–
Zana Wright
@zanawright

Styling–
Rosie Brown Hawker Vintage
@iamhawker


When we create our own homes, we tend to shape the design around what suits our lifestyle and our aesthetics – for local architect, Zana Wright, designing a cottage on her parent’s land was more about creating something that suited the local landscape. We spent a glorious morning basking in the soft sunshine at this beautifully low-impact home.


Who lives here?

My partner Sam, myself, and lots of tiny creatures.

The first thing you notice when you visit Quandong Cottage is the way that natural materials are celebrated so beautifully, but also in quite a contemporary way – as the architect who designed the home, what was your vision for the home?

Alan Watts once said “I define a materialist as a person who loves material, and who reverences it, and who delights in using it to its best advantage”.

I wanted to create a house which honoured its materials in their most raw form, made sense in relation to its ‘place’, and had a minimal environmental footprint.

We hear so much about ‘food miles’, yet we hear very little about ‘material miles’ when it comes to shaping our homes. So I looked at what natural materials were available in our surrounding area, and allowed these to play a large role in generating the design. I wanted to challenge the assumption that natural building techniques and earth materials can only be used for making “hippie-hobbit-homes”, by showing that they too can shape a beautiful, simple, contemporary place to live.

My initial (idealistic) vision was to excavate into the hill and use the earth to build the rammed earth walls, but when we tested the soil we found it was almost 100% clay which wasn’t appropriate, so the materials for the walls mostly came from local quarries at Broken Head and Pottsville. 

We did, however, manage to use the clay from the site to make the earthen floor, which also comprised Broken Head sand, and sugar cane mulch from a farm at Mullumbimby, instead of the more conventional straw.

Rather than opting for commonly used Indonesian rainforest timbers or Tassie Oak, we limited our palette to timbers which grow in North Eastern NSW and South East Queensland. Everybody loves to use birch plywood which is shipped all the way from Scandinavia or Russia, but I found that our local Hoop Pine plywood grown and manufactured a couple of hours away in South East Queensland, was a very similar colour and equally lovely. We used it to line the ceilings, and all of the ceiling’s offcuts were used to build the joinery.

The retaining walls are made from our local columnar basalt, collected from a farmer’s paddock at Alstonville. This type of stone is a very identifiable part of the Byron vernacular, and one of the few locally sourced materials commonly seen in buildings and landscaping around this area.

I tried to keep every element of the house true to the vision throughout the process, but I certainly had to learn to relinquish my idealism at times, pick my battles and make plenty of compromises, as many decisions still had to come back to the budget and practicality.

 
 
 

So many of the spaces we inhabit keep us so comfortable that they disconnect us from what is happening in the natural world around us. This allows us to easily forget that we are part of nature also. 

 
 
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WORDS TO INSPIRE–
01. EARTH
02. SURROUNDS
03. CONTEMPORARY
04. SPACE
05. NATURE


The home seems to nestle into its surroundings and gracefully sit upon the landscape, tell us how you’ve designed the home to work with nature.

The home should feel at one with its surroundings because it is literally made from them! I hope that when experiencing this home, one should be able to locate themselves as being situated right here in this part of our vast land, and not feel like they could be in some other corner of Australia, or even Europe or Asia.

The home also works with nature to keep you cool in Summer and warm in Winter. It has been designed to open up during the hotter months to harness the breezes, with the ideal eave depths keeping the rammed earth walls, slab and earthen floor shaded during this time so that they radiate this cool throughout the day and night. During the colder months the house closes up, while the eave depths allow the Winter sun to enter and warm the solid materials, radiating this warmth into the house even once the sun has set.

The creation of the home was a bit of a family affair, with you also joining in on the construction, tell us about the journey and who has been involved.

The main structure of the house was primarily built by local sustainable builders Balanced Earth, whom my partner Sam was also working for. Then they signed off and it became a family affair with Sam, my Dad, and I having a great time collaboratively building all of the in-built joinery, kitchen, bathroom, earthen floor and many other details. My Mum did all of the planting and landscaping, and my brother provided manpower from time to time.

Working as an architect can be quite dissatisfying, just sitting in front of a computer screen pushing lines around, sending the drawings off for someone else to build, then moving on to the next project. I personally felt trapped being valued only for my cerebral offerings, and rarely getting the tangible feeling of using my hands to bring an idea into fruition. When my parents offered me the opportunity to design this small house for their rural property, I saw it is an amazing opportunity to change this, get dirty and actually build something! For this (and much more) I am very grateful to my parents!

 
 
 
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The living spaces, including the bathroom, flow seamlessly between the indoors and outdoors. What’s it like living in a space that isn’t completely sealed off from the outdoors?

I love how living in a house where I must walk outside to move between spaces brings me so into my body. It allows me to intensely feel the changes which are constantly happening in nature – the cycle of the seasons, when the wind turns westerly, the brewing of a storm, when the koala mating season is happening!

I remember working in offices in the city where I would be inside all day, then leave the building to go home and only then realise that darkness had already fallen, or that it must have been raining earlier judging by the puddles on the footpath. 

So many of the spaces we inhabit keep us so comfortable that they disconnect us from what is happening in the natural world around us. This allows us to easily forget that we are part of nature also. 

If you could share some wisdom with the whole world on how to design their living spaces, what would you say?

Have a look around you. What natural or recycled materials exist in your local area that you could use to create your space? Allow these to generate your design rather than starting with an aesthetic or a Pinterest board. 

Oh, and don’t fall into the trap of feeling like you need to be too comfortable all of the time! A chilly nip between cosy spaces or a hot shower in a cold rainstorm beneath the stars is good for the soul.


Originally published in Paradiso Issue 9