This 40 square metre home in Hobart designed by Josh FitzGerald, Director of architecture studio Archier for himself and his wife Millie was always meant to be moveable.
Casa Acton was only made possible thanks to Millie’s father, who suggested that the couple design a small home on some land he owned, with a view to moving the house to new land owned by Josh and Millie when they were ready.
The challenge was set – to design a small yet perfectly functional home that can stay where it is or move to a new plot of land in the future.
“This was the moment when it all suddenly made sense. We’d been previously renting a 40-square-metre cottage, so we knew we could live somewhere small. Combined with a lot of ideas we’d been exploring in different projects and among ourselves as a studio, this suggestion from Millie’s dad gave us the confidence to embark on building something ourselves in stages, without having to already own the land,” says Josh FitzGerald.
The key to unlocking the design came when they decided to build the home with SIPS (structural insulated panel systems), an alternative to traditional construction and a product that’s still relatively new in Australia. This allowed the structure to be light but also well insulated, while creating an unusual interior finish.
The home was set on a more permanent foundation – a painstakingly laid sandstone floor that gave the building significant thermal mass and provided an interesting finish underfoot.
The exterior references old apple sheds in the area with a raw timber board-and-batten cladding. The result is a fresh take on architecture – a simple structure made using an innovative material with an intergenerational ownership plan very well suited to the current housing market.
More on Archier
