Home grown, world class architecture

There's no doubt Australia has its share of ordinary, less than visionary building designers, architects, developers and clients - resulting in a deepening, soupy swamp of bad residential designs (seriously, you need a cheerful disposition, yellow vest and lifeboat to stay afloat in some suburbs, don't you?).

But, if the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Singapore this week is anything to go by, we also have a disproportionately and fortuitously large share of the world's exceptionally good, even great, architects.

Seven years after launching, WAF has firmly established itself as the world's largest architecture competition, and a WAF award as the prize to have. Participation by feted luminaries such as Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid speaks for the level of entry. It was encouraging then to see a raft of Australian architects and residential projects shortlisted this year - in particular, four in the major 'completed' houses category and two in the 'future' houses currently unbuilt.

With only 25 projects shortlisted, the nation's architects and work is surely uncommonly well represented. So, what makes them special?

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Four homes - two responding to dense urban settings in Sydney and Brisbane, one to idyllic Pittwater and another to an unspoilt bush estate in far north Queensland - were shortlisted in the completed house category. Vastly dissimilar in just about every way, from materials to form, they share some immediately obvious characteristics - they're exceptionally well resolved homes, designed with striking creativity and intellectual rigour.

Where better to start than the Stamp House in the Daintree in far north Queensland by Charles Wright Architects - as captivating, joyous and dramatic an architectural form as they come.

This extraordinary building is designed as a new sustainable tropical housing prototype for off-grid coastal locations. Charles describes the concept for this cantilevered, cyclone proof structure, suspended over an engineered water eco-system, as: "A safe and secure off-grid structure, carbon neutral in operation, as luxury retreat and sanctuary an enigmatic bunker. A new tropical architecture of resilience, both brutal and elegant."

At the other end of the country, Andrew Maynard's shortlisted Moor House sits in Melbourne's Fitzroy, a suburb undergoing gentrification in sometimes rather unsympathetic ways. His design acts as a reminder of how to renovate sympathetically, and creatively. His clients were a young family of four living in a modest, ageing house who needed more space, but were keen to eschew any large contemporary renovation that dominated its context. Instead, they worked to maximise interior spaces, while respecting the context by creating a single building out of three small objects rather than a single "monolith".

Respect for context is also immediately apparent in the rejuvenation of a small workers cottage on a narrow site in inner city Brisbane, the Aperture House by Cox Rayner Architects and Twofold Studio. Architect Jayson Blight used the narrow site and linear response to cleverly explore how apertures can physically and perceptually interconnect spaces in longitudinal, lateral and unfolding ways. Using a four step process he remodelled the existing cottage into a library, lounge and master bedroom; created a 'bridge' comprising bedrooms and a 'secret' garden to connect to an indoor-outdoor kitchen/dining/play space, backed by a parterred garden and pool.

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Home grown, world class architecture