Acre Landscape Architecture Studio - Best in Category & Gold Award

Residential Landscape Design Less than 50m2

Design Brief:

The clients of this small inner city courtyard and off street car space were looking for a sanctuary with softening visual interest that the home's living hub could look out onto. Adding multi-functional architectural elements whilst layering landscape softness made this a challenging site which has developed a calming character.

In St Kilda, an off-street car park space is worth up to $100k so the client never wanted to lose it in the design process and they also wanted a garden that was enjoyable to use for different living requirements. The functionality of this garden has not been lost, instead the lines are blurred through the breaking up and softening of the spaces. Layering and overlapping of hard structures has allowed this very small space to have multiple zones to be used for different functions whilst being impactful and soft for the view from inside the home.

With half the space being taken up by the off street car park the concept was to make this feel lush and beautiful and non utilitarian when a car was not in play. A lot of the hard structures became multi purposed; a retaining wall became a bench, the monolithic floating bench was an impact statement whilst being the location of the built in BBQ and the dining table of the yard whilst the driveway was broken up to give the ability to green the ground plane and make it feel like a lush informal sitting area.

Screens hide utility spaces whilst becoming beautiful backdrops that frame the plant life. Benches and tables float to not only give the space visual impact but to save space wherever possible in this small courtyard.

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