‘Bunkeren’, a floating concrete house seamlessly balanced on the rocks of Whitebridge, Australia’s cascading coastal hills is the product of architect James Stockwell and his Danish-Australian clients. Boasting intimate shared living spaces with a resilient exterior, this house appears to avoid many of the challenges of concrete. It is hard to pin down all the reasons why the ‘Bunkeren’ appears to succeed. From floating concrete canter-leavers, subtle but intricate sliding glass walls, brass fixtures and wooden interiors, and interwoven greenery, the house has been designed to ambiguously blend with the surrounding landscape.
The concrete structure provides a safe home, despite Whitebridge’s threat of severe storms and bush fires. This resilient quality to brutalist architecture is often criticised, as it often refuses to work with its surroundings, standing isolated. The ‘Bunkeren’ however, firstly offers a solution to this as the concrete appears to nestle into the rock-face. James dug into the hillside to create multiple layers of living, that weave in and around the landscape. This house offers uninterrupted living areas, and views of the coast, whilst remaining unpredictable, allowing the outside to flow in and around the structure, through both greenery and the rock-face. The building’s name comes to life in the cellar and dinner space on the lower levels. The concrete walls sympathetically contour the rocks that James carved into. This gives the impression that the home organically emerged from the hillside, as the rock climbs up and over, meeting the upper levels of the house.
This celebration of both the landscape and architecture, continues on the upper floors. The concrete cantilevers appear as though they are floating as vast glass walls make it appear as though there aren’t any supporting walls. This is further highlighted when they are slid open, providing another opportunity for the outside to flow in and visa-versa. As well as this, when opened up, it is difficult to determine where the building starts and ends, solving the often predictable nature of concrete architecture. This unpredictability is also echoed in the nature of the glass panels, which are made up of varied rectangle and square panels framed with black edges.
The ‘Bunkeren’ continues to solve the issues that come with providing light and ventilation as James carves long skylights and internal glass terrariums into the space. This not only brings the outside back in, with more plants, it also provides an opportunity for light to travel through the space and change also breaking the potential harshness of the space. Paired with the rock-face, the skylights also provide another reminder of the structures existence as an overgrown bunker.
Concrete of course provides so many contradictions. However one of the main successes of this home is it’s coziness. Concrete architecture has the possibility to look void of any character. Not the ‘Bunkeren’! The choice to shutter the horizontal slabs of concrete that make up the home’s ceilings, with wood, not only visually breaks up the space as it juxtaposes the huge precast vertical walls, it’s texture also warms up the space. Wood has a huge role in making this structure a cosy living space, as dark red teak wood makes up the kitchen and bathroom units, and fixed and sliding walls that transform and provide storage throughout the property. Paired with brass fixings, soft furnishings and warm intimate Danish lighting often delicately hung, the interior manages to rescue concrete’s infamous reputation for being cold.