The renowned Melbourne architect Sean Godsell once declared, ‘Good [house] design is about journey, discovery, and reward.’

This provocative statement evokes an awareness that space is not just about a series of room labels that describe a use but can be a procession of ever-changing active settings.

Example 01 - In a lecture at Queensland’s Bond University, Sean describes the integration of a steel plate within the floor plan of his Edward St. House.

Dean Godsell - To look at it, one could question why it’s there. Aesthetically, it appears out of place amongst the polished concrete. Yet, it produces a different sound from the rest of the floor space when traversed. 

 A melodic gesture for our musician client.
Via this detail, Sean tangibly makes possible the physical acknowledgment of arrival via the passing over of a threshold.

Example 02 – In a Q&A with Houses Magazine, Timothy Hill, director of Partners Hill, describes the journey of navigating a three-story staircase in his ‘Teneriffe House’ design.

Timothy Hill - With all the cut-and-dry things you have to do when you make a building – what poetic potential do these things have? In one of our houses, there is a seven-metre climb to get to the living area. That’s a pragmatic issue, but there’s a big difference in potential tactics. One way is to say, okay, I’m just going to make a hardwearing staircase. A whole other tactic is to say that given that you have to climb seven metres, how can you make that experience into something that’s not only a pleasure but gives a particular character to that place.

Our stair itself is like a picturesque route because you get various changing views at different places as you go along. You can see the ultimate destination when you start to climb, but it’s not immediately evident where you are going during the ascent.

Example 03 - Personal Story.

Anthony Rigg – I remember growing up in the small town of Cooranbong, Twenty minutes south of Newcastle, NSW. The local Sanitarium Health Food Company was half an hour’s walk from the family home through the bush. At a specific time, every day, the smell of freshly-baked Weet-Bix would drift over our house working its way northwest as the afternoon south-easterly blew. When I moved out of home and would come back to visit my parents, the smell of Weet-Bix would bring with it a powerful sense of being home.

In each of us are sensitivities to specific locations from our past. Therefore, details we design into our environments have the compacity to take us somewhere.

These three examples, while different, are experiential and sensory.

As a design proposition, our homes can ground us in the immediacy of daily living, producing memory. They can act as the enabler of a life lived in the moment, present within a dynamic environment that can produce powerful feelings and associations with place.

Sean Godsell Architects. Lecture (Bond University – FSD).
‘Donovan Hill in Profile,’ Houses., issue 25 2001. (AA Architecture Media), 92.

Photo - Edward St. House – Sean Godsell Architects