A project by Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture with Bates Landscape has won the Garden or Landscape category at the 2020 Houses Awards. Vaucluse Garden contextualises an existing house by late Australian architect Paul Pholeros, creating a series of “episodic encounters” that reference the geological conditions of the project’s clifftop location in Sydney’s east.
“The garden’s topography ingeniously creates a series of subtle, protected and verdant microecologies, which resolve the edges of the built elements on the site. To the seaward side, the gardens are sunken and sheltered below the cliff edge, serving to foreground the horizon’s expanse,” states the jury citation.
“[The garden’s] small series of landscape interventions acts to experientially ground the domestic life of the house. Delightfully measured and scaled, these gardens are conceived holistically, as a shared habitat for communities of human and non-human life.”
The Houses Awards is an annual program celebrating high-quality Australian residential architecture.
Previous winners of the program’s Garden or Landscape category include:
2019: Whynot St Pool and Carport by Kieron Gait Architects and Dan Young Landscape Architect
2018: Coastal Garden House by Neeson Murcutt Architects with 360 Degrees Landscape Architects
2017: Waterloo House by Anthony Gill Architects with Budwise Garden Design
2016: Outdoor Fairfield House by Kennedy Nolan in collaboration with Sam Cox Landscape
For the full list of 2020 Houses Awards winners, go here.
