The final built linear path connects a garage/studio to a major living pavilion. A bridge, passing an external pond, includes this liquid platform within the built extent of the house. Entry is via a vestibule, one of two that bracket glazed openings to the living areas. These vestibules accommodate a series of sliding screens, allowing a glazed wall to completely disappear and the living room to be experienced as an open verandah. In this process of reorientation Murcutt’s apparent desire for universality, a generic solution to the house in a landscape, initially described via the simple logic of a north-facing pavilion and its component parts, is ultimately re-imagined as a heightened experience, an immediate connection to nature suggested by the minimal shelter of a refined path and camp site.
With the location and principal components established, this project developed over several years and via continuous and subtle adjustment was gradually refined. Its evolution is particularly visible in a series of section drawings at 1:20. These dry, economical drawings operate as both a mode of thinking and a medium for construction, and Murcutt’s architecture seems to substantively appear through numerous reworkings of this section.
An intricate knowledge of many off-the-shelf materials and prefabricated building systems informs these working drawings. The documents are heavily notated and specifications form an integral layer. Studies of Lidco standard aluminium sliding door and window glazing systems are indicative. Murcutt began using Lidco in the 1960s and has since employed this building component in successive projects. In spite of his clear familiarity with the product, in each project aluminium details are redrawn in plan and section at half and full scale to rethink and newly contextualize each element. The Simpson-Lee House drawings exemplify this process. Studies show stripped glazing extrusions coupled with rotated identical supports. Murcutt removes the handle on the sliding door and inverts the section to double as a handle. The interlocking of the elements improves structural stability and allows two vertical elements to read as a single glazing jamb. The overlapping provides a weather seal and reduces the total width of the accumulated layers. Standard sections are in this way continually reconceived to use less material and yet perform more functions. This design process is alluded to by Murcutt: “I always felt if you found a solution which did three things rather than one that the solution was getting somewhere.” Economy of means is implied as an ambition on several levels. In the Lidco example, the resultant elements are finer, thinner, visually lighter and simpler in appearance, yet they satisfy several levels of desired operation.