design
mag |
49
Quick Facts
Ilma Grove house
Location:
Northcote VIC
Architect:
Andrew Maynard
Architects
Structural engineer:
R Bliem & Associates
Builder:
Trimbuild
Bricklayer:
Dave Cardwell
& Son
Both owners of the Ilma Grove house worked for
the timber industry when they approached
Maynard to rebuild and extend the north-facing
rear of their brick house.“They wanted to do a
sustainable timber build but a 100-year-old
covenant required construction to be in brick
and tile... and cost more than five hundred
pounds!” says Maynard.
Removal of the covenant was possible “but we
said let’s do something interesting within that
constraint.”Which is surprising as the Maynard
practice is noted for its use of timber.The change
to brickwork “is probably a more rigorous
sustainable approach,” contends Maynard’s
business partner Mark Austin.“We don’t use
bricks that much and there’s no particular reason
why,” he admits.“But what we like about bricks is
that idea of memory, and working around North
Fitzroy you see some amazing brickwork.”
Of course,Andrew Maynard doesn’t mean that
to be taken literally.After all a brick is simply a
compressed block of inert minerals, not an
oversized silicon chip. His concept of memory
is more abstract.
“You can knock off the back of a house and
chuck on this new shiny thing that quite often is
violent and smashes into the back of the old,”
says Maynard, co-director of Andrew Maynard
Architects. For this residential extension in
Melbourne’s inner-north, he chose to reuse the
bricks from the demolished rear section of the
1930s Californian bungalow.“What we really like
about reusing a material is that it has already
had a life, it’s got that age, a bit of wisdom
about it.”
In this case, the concept of brick memory could
be taken a step further.The location of a rich
seam of clay highly suited to brick manufacture
led to the establishment of a booming industry
in Melbourne’s inner north in the 1850s that was
still operational more than a century later. So it is
probable that the bricks on this site were from
clay extracted and processed within just a few
kilometres.The old brickworks have closed but
the same clay seam pops up on Melbourne’s
outer north, the site of Austral Bricks Wollert
super-plant.
Can a brick have a memory? Andrew Maynard believes so.
What does that mean for the collective memory of a house?
