7
A
rchitecture is all about fingerprints. Not the
type often found on windows and walls, but
those that shape, pattern and forge their
designers’ legacy.
These unique characteristics are the giveaway of
their creators. This is apparent in the latest work by
husband and wife team Lindsay and Kerry Clare with
a small suburban granny flat at Burleigh Heads.
It all seems a world away from the hustle and bustle
of the Gold Coast high-rise just 15 kms. to the north.
Architecture is less an occupation than preoccupation. It’s why the Clares’ can be considered
in a similar light to the mid-20th century husband
and wife team of Charles and Ray Eames whose
craft had such far-reaching consequences. While the
Clares haven’t explored furniture-making like the
Eames’, their design rigour and enduring partnership
have a similar conviction.
Gold medalists of the Australian Institute of
Architects in 2010, their Queensland Gallery of
Modern Art (2006) stands as a bravura work of
elegant understatement. More recently Melbourne’s
design-challenged Dockland’s precinct, benefited
from the opening of the Clare designed city library.
Despite the usual commercial buffeting, it attains
its gravity not with leaden mass but subtraction
and refinement. More reminiscent of early Wright
Brothers’ flying machines, the library contradicts
its more ponderous neighbours as if in levitation.
Their latest project is comprised principally of
corrugated steel, laminated timber and Viridian
glass. It virtually turns back the calendar to the ’80s
and ’90s when they were based on the Sunshine
Coast and among the leaders in environmental
place-making along with Gabriel Poole and John
Mainwaring. Lightweight, filleted and layered, their
designs speak of the authentic rather than generic.
The granny flat is one of their smallest projects
in a long time, yet loses nothing in the DNA transfer
from grand public to modest private. Its planar
qualities and broad-bladed pivot doors for instance,
borrow from those at GoMA that so effortlessly
link to its shaded riverfront.
The opportunity for profound and intimate
architecture can occur at home. In suburban
Burleigh Heads, not far from the rolling surf,
the Clares remind us of this sk ill to make a large
statement with modest means. Aspect, prospect
and privacy are all artfully composed in a suburban
street not known for such quiet innovation.