The Australian architecture firm Edition Office designed Fenwick, a building with a raw silhouette that blends into the surrounding vegetation.
It is on one of the banks of the Yarra River, known as Birrarung, not far from Yarra Bend Park in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, that Edition Office has installed its latest project, Fenwick. Perched on a escarpment overlooking the riverbanks, it was conceived as a "broken mass of three distinct forms" that straddles a space between residential street and cliff. All the volumes have been shaped and dimensioned so that the whole appears as a small, coherent series of buildings within the landscape.
Using a language of curves, the project is a meeting point between the three entities, creating pockets of entry and invitation. Meanders allow daylight and shadow to drift and sculpt the built forms as the sun moves across the site. Also between the three volumes, green corridors open up, allowing plants and vines to grow and envelop the exterior walls, while the treetops filter the light and views of the river and the landscape beyond.
The living spaces are open to the north, the river and the valley, and organized in such a way that circulation paths link to these sectors, while the bedrooms and ancillary spaces are open to the green spaces between the pavilions, glimpsed through copper mesh sails.
In terms of materials, the architectural project echoes its clifftop location and the understated elegance of the surrounding modernist houses. Textured concrete panels, raw copper, and galvanized steel allow the building to age gracefully, gaining character and slowly reflecting the landscape in which it stands.
