14
Vision Magazine
Your materials are very similar to Neutra’s.
Perhaps the most obvious difference is the
technological advances in glass.
They are, yes. You can still see the finesse in Neutra’s
work and the other Case Study houses. They were
very much ahead of their time. The seamless
connections between internal and external spaces
are visually evident. They minimized thicknesses
everywhere to see where they could push the limits
to reduce mass and size.
Your use of concrete and steel provide an anchor,
or armature, for the veil of glass that falls around
that whole edge. That’s just a really, really
wonderful counter-balance of materials.
Thank you. We cantilevered out over the dam and
grounded the rear of the pavilion where it cuts
slightly into the natural topography. It does have that
anchor. Again, it comes back to balance, where you
have one part floating and protruding over water
and another part deeply rooted into
the topography and landscape.
What was the most challenging design issue?
We built within a flood plane and needed to raise
the building twice during council negotiations.
It needed to be 500mls above the one-in-100 year
flood level. Conceptually, we always wanted the
pavilion to float as low as possible over the water.
The idea was that when you walked out over
the water itself, it was as though you float too.
We always wanted to try and keep the floor level
as close to the water as possible.
In Praise of Place