"Out on the Patio"
One of five shortlisted projects for the 2022 NGV Architecture Commission. With Bryan Chung.
Out on the patio, the home expands into the city. The public environment is all around us on the other side of the curtain. A linear length of verandah serves as a public gesture to the street. It is a place to meet, connect and engage with the world. As the home becomes increasingly public, the city becomes more domesticated. The garden is our new public space. Openness, reflexivity, and intermingling are encouraged. Here we are brought into engagement with architecture and the landscape. A stranger along the street is waving hello. A passing conversation with a neighbour while hanging out the washing lasts two hours. Kids are running through the cool comfort of garden sprinklers. A garden contains the ghosts of Roy Grounds’ house. How can we interact with the world? What can we observe?
The global pandemic has led to a rediscovery of the home as a predominant place in our lives. As a result of new living and working conditions, the home has undergone a process of expansion beyond its physical boundaries. To augment this, a digital revolution is taking place where the public environment is becoming ever more present in the home. The external public sphere is merging with a private one, and even strangers access your innermost spaces.
The house is the centrepiece in this new complex public reality. Verandahs and gardens are the new alternatives to the public square. They have become sites where it is possible to communicate, make new friends, sing, dance, and exercise. During the pandemic, people who were confined to the home tried every way to add a new public dimension, sometimes by literally opening the house to the outside. We examine the verandah and its performative interface with street life.
