Ottawa Road
,
Toorak
Designed in collaboration with Jack Merlo and Addarc Architects, Ottawa Road Residence is a residence of edited contemporary precision where a timelessly exacting architectural language is counterbalanced by a garden plane of layered botanical beauty.
Ottawa Road
,
Toorak
,
2019
Behind a palisade fence with a verdant backdrop lies an ornamentally-led front garden defined by a subtle Japanese aesthetic.
Cascading plants drip over a monolithic concrete planter that doubles as an embankment balustrade at the front door; verdant outlooks bookend a central gallery that dissects the residence's ground floor from the entryway to the back garden, cultivating a landscape environment that is immediate and seamlessly responsive to Ottawa Road Residence’s architecture. Planted in orderly patterns are mondo grass, ginkgo trees and yuletide camellia. Upright pear trees line the pool and an outdoor entertaining space bears a detail allowing vertical climbers to wend their way up each steel support.
In a further dedication to entwining architecture and landscape, planters placed on the interior give a cinematic quality to the shadow play of foliage behind glass bricks that form the residence’s first-floor facade while limestone flooring carries from inside to out where huge ornamental planters blend with the concrete form of Ottawa Road Residence’s elevations.
From its manicured hedges and bamboo screening to the balance between formal and informal outdoor dining areas, Ottawa Road Residence is an exemplar of abiding landscape design.