Federal House

Every time I stay at this house, I'm captivated by the disappearance of time. I feel like time slows down or stops; it has its own cadence, its own rhythm. I'm transfixed by the cinematic nature of the ever-evolving and ever-changing landscape that surrounds this place.

I'm Kim Bridgland, Director of Edition Office Architects, and together with Aaron Roberts, designer of the Federal House. The site is located in the little township of Federal, in the hinterland of Byron Bay, on a remarkable patch of Bundjalung Country, overlooking the rolling hillside to the north. The initial brief was for a holiday house for our Melbourne-based clients, to allow them to spend time up north before retirement and before they moved here permanently.

We gave the clients a copy of Peter Zumthor's book Atmospheres and asked them to take it away, get into that mindset, and see if they wanted to follow that journey. Once we began that conversation, we explored the idea of using this house as a vehicle to create particular moments of experience. The clients were committed to experimenting, tailoring the house to how it might make them feel. The design always prioritized experience.

At its heart, the Federal House is a homestead, a colonial wraparound veranda, typical of Northern New South Wales and Queensland. It learns from the past and understands how people have lived here, but it's conscious that it's an outsider, asking for permission to rest on this hillside. The house is designed to be approached from above, making the roof as important as the walls.

Entering the house, you crack open the opaque timber façade and walk into an outdoor space, looking directly across a fern garden that brings natural daylight through the center of the house. This becomes an intermediary zone, connecting the lounge to the rear, and to the dining, kitchen, and living space. The footprint is small, and the clients were happy to shrink down the internal spaces, with the possibility of expanding onto the veranda and into the landscape beyond.

We approached the design from a place of shadow, always asking how we could shape the light. The house is wrapped in a veil of deep textured black timber battens, creating a filtered interface between inside and outside, especially on the Western facade.

The material palette is twofold: warm blackbutt timbers, creating a rich sense of immersion when you step inside, balanced with black pigmented concrete and rough-sawn textured timber. The monochromatic palette of black materials allows for high contrast, focusing attention on the quality of light moving across them.

Descending into the pool space takes you away from surface and light, into a holistic relationship with sound. As you walk into that cavernous black concrete space, you feel the light moving across it, the rippling water, and the air cascading down the central fern garden. There's a heightened awareness of your presence, with the rippling effect of your voice and movements echoing in that chamber.

When natural breezes flow from the north, they cool over the water, chilling themselves as they rise through the fern garden and into the living spaces, naturally cooling the house.

I'm incredibly grateful to the clients for being so open to this journey, allowing the design to unfold into a vehicle for transformation — of being connected to this place and time.