Tennis court dimensions

Official measurements from the Court and Enclosure Dimensions pdf on the Tennis Australia website. Minimum Total Playing Area (that's TPA for those in the biz) is 35.75m x 17.07m. And preferably oriented North-South. What surface were you thinking club champ?

Glazing as scaled up brick pattern

I liked this scaled-up stretcher-bond pattern in this glazing by the short-lived student practice Architecture Group from New Zealand. Rothingham house, 1951.

Precedent: MacIntyre's Coil House, 1953

On this side of the world, also in 1953, Peter MacIntyre designed this courtyard-ish house, which, similarly to Aalto's summer house, responds to the landscape by cascading down the slope and avoiding a few big gums. Lily and Martin both picked out this one from the Monument 'Classic Houses' issue.

Precedent: Aalto's summer house, 1953

Aalto's own summer retreat house in Muuratsalo, Finland, designed in 1953. Similarly to a lot of the other precedents, this house is a semi-courtyard house, with the rooms arranged in an L shape around a brick courtyard. Aalto used this house to create an essay in ways to compose bricks; different bonds, grout depths, tiles, etc. Richard Weston describes this house as "by comparison with conventional summer-houses, both traditional and contemporary, the design is remarkably introverted. The rooms have small windows and the normally direct relationship to nature is mediated by the courtyard, which defines a man-made place within the forest..."

LandVic Maps

From far to close, these (feint) drawings are from the LandVic Interactive Map, a government database which collects all the Australian property and title information. They have 10m contours, which are pretty vague but good for putting together a terrain model of the surrounding hills. Combined with the survey which will have much more detailed level information we can the accurately determine what views are possible from what parts of the site.

Sketches

Views from house site

Looking east across adjacent field.

Panorama from north round to west from on top of car where house might sit. The surrounding hills can be

Looking north over adjacent valley. Photo taken from north-west corner of site above road.

Up.

Weird tree

I wonder how you could use this mid-growth-conjoining tree near the site as a starting point for architecture? You probably wouldn't want to on second thought. Too weird and a bit creepy. Like an ingrown toenail.

Details, textures and nature on site

Photos from site visit in April '07.

Position of house on site

The white box indicates where the house is to go as discussed at the site visit. Quite a few trees will need to be lopped, but hopefully they'll be good views from that spot. We'll be able to test that with the survey and a detailed site model. Photos are from the site visit in April '07.

Looking south-east from road near creek crossing.

Looking west from approach access onto site.

Looking west from centre of site.

Looking north-east from field west of site, close.

Looking north-east from field west of site, far.

PRIVATISATION

Everythings bloody privatised these days! I saw on the news just this morning that in Qld the cost of water has been put up by 15%, not because people are using too much, but because they're being good greenies and not using enough! making the water company lose money.

So I know it's a bit annoying, but now I've even privatised this blog, as soon the work on it will become a bit more sensitive. Now only 'registered' users will be able to view it and make comments. As the 'administrator', I'm the only one who can do the inviting, so if there's someone you want to show the blog to, send me their email address and i'll have them on here STAT.