Exploring the Everything House Concept

Gerard Dombroski 0:13

it's good listening into radio dombrowski uh , cool , all right so what's on the agenda today ?

Ben Sutherland 0:22

Should we crack into it ? What ?

Sam Brown 0:23

have you got for us ?

Gerard Dombroski 0:24

What yarns Are we spinning ?

Sam Brown 0:27

Well , before we get into the nitty-gritty , a bit of a hiatus for the DPP . A few life things have been going on Ben's shifted , shifted islands no islands . Up island To the big schmoke . To the big schmoke , gerard's been building cool shit . I don't know if it's supposed to be on the D-low or not , and I've had another kid , so we've been a bit preoccupied . But we're back better than ever and with a bit of a new take . We enjoyed our interview series but trying to delve deeper into some design concepts coming up , and the first one of the days , something that I've been thinking about , it's kind of been on my mind for a while and it's a concept that I call the everything house , sort of focusing on materiality , watch out and it's a design idea where everything in the house is made from one material .

Ben Sutherland 1:27

So this let's take concrete spark .

Sam Brown 1:30

What sparked that on for you , sam I think it's a use , like us using sips a lot , and it's an incredible like it's a very wooden interior when it's exposed , yeah , but it's like it's , it's a , it's a veneer ultimately right like the actual , like the inside of the wall is not all wood and ice cream sandwich you know this the slab .

Sam Brown 1:56

If it's on a slab , you know obviously that's not wood . But so I was like what happens if everything is wood ? You know you're your framing , your lining , your insulation , your furniture , your Everything , your plumbing , plumbing yeah , why ?

Ben Sutherland 2:13

not you may as well exclude plumbing and electrical . I don't know how the electrical I mean electrical , probably not .

Sam Brown 2:21

I think there's some points you're going to have to draw the line . You're not getting a good current .

Gerard Dombroski 2:25

Yeah , I don't know man .

Sam Brown 2:28

I'm all for an extreme concept and forego the realities but I , yeah , I I mean , well , that's the thing , right , gerard ? Like you don't have to , it doesn't necessarily even have to be livable . I mean , I I've jotted down a couple of examples for you guys to check out . I don't know if you had a look at them at all .

Sam Brown 2:46

Probably the most yeah , I was going to say the most radical of them is the Robert Bruno house . I don't know if anyone's seen that . I'll put a link to it in the show notes , but that is a proof of concept .

Ben Sutherland 2:59

One thing that blew my mind , actually when I was doing some research on this , is the amount of quite well renowned architects who have actually attempted this I guess , probably like when you are working with material like concrete , then it's just kind of like makes sense to make it , oh you know , fully , fully concrete concrete roof , concrete structure and yeah like today .

Ben Sutherland 3:28

I was a great example , so concrete is definitely the obvious choice of material . Also probably a lot easier to achieve in some of those foreign countries . As opposed to new zealand , I don't know how it would work trying to like meet the New Zealand building code .

Sam Brown 3:48

Well , I think that's the thing right , like this idea is not something that's necessarily going to be even functional , but I think it's just like it's a folly concept . A pavilion , yeah , really exciting to explore , and that's that Westerpunt by Studio Marta , really exciting to explore , and that's that westerpunt by studio mata . You know , that's that sort of helix , um concrete , uh , what uh like viewing platform is what it kind of is . You know , that is that's the sort of idea that I'm getting to the entire thing .

Gerard Dombroski 4:23

Yeah , it is a epic object .

Sam Brown 4:27

Yes , but that's quite cool because you know it's concrete . But it's so . It's so dynamic and so fluid and it sort of really belies that you know the , the nature or the you know the physical nature of concrete , because it looks like water the gnarliness of that is probably building it in the waves .

Gerard Dombroski 4:46

Like it's , it's lapped by the waves yeah which that must have some horrendous foundations but you're right .

Sam Brown 4:56

Going back to the , you know , like today or ando concepts and stuff , you know there's definitely architects there that champion a material you know , and kundig's one who I , you know .

Sam Brown 5:09

That comes springs to mind maybe not necessarily , like you know , giving himself over to one material in its entirety , but , like his , the honesty of the materials that he uses , like everything is sort of warts and all it's raw . It's you raw , it's sort of in its natural state , which I quite like as well . I feel like there's so much gloss and ornamentation , almost like the disguising of the reality of materials in the stuff that we do , which I find kind of disappointing .

Gerard Dombroski 5:38

Yeah Well , I think he's good at following his aesthetic concept . It's clearly industrial and pushes it all the way . I think , like , for example , this Robert Bruno house big steel sort of animalistic creature thing from the outside is epic but on the inside they kind of fall down . Like the looks like laminate flooring in this super industrial steel building . You're so close .

Sam Brown 6:12

Yeah , I kind of feel like You're not quite taking the concept far enough . Well , I almost think it's kind of posters death . You know , the people that have bought it have tried to turn it into something a bit real and I think you can stay there now .

Ben Sutherland 6:25

Yeah , it's an Airbnb , I think , by the looks of it .

Sam Brown 6:28

Yeah , but it's kind of sad in a way because it's going against what I think his original concept was , which was for it to be completely steel . Yeah , and I really like the story in a way , the sustainable nature of it and the fact that all the steel he used was salvaged and then he , over decades , developed it iteratively . But he'd like chop bits out and then reuse them somewhere else and like be like I want to cut a window here and then like weld it onto somewhere else and they'd be like oh , I don't like that and you know , I kind of like that ability to meld and sort of like manipulate the material because it is all the same .

Sam Brown 7:10

You know you couldn't really do that if there was , you know there was a timber nature there .

Ben Sutherland 7:15

If I was to I would definitely go with timber as a material if I was to attempt this , I think just because it comes in so many like such a variety of different forms , so you can already have some sort of timber cladding , timber flooring , timber structure . Is it the potato ?

Gerard Dombroski 7:34

of building materials the potato of building materials .

Sam Brown 7:37

That's brilliant . Probably is . That's perfect . You can what fries mash .

Ben Sutherland 7:46

Yeah , exactly Chips , and it's so good , boiled , baked and sustainable , I guess Goes in the ground Architecture school does that like chair cardboard thing .

Gerard Dombroski 7:58

They should do potatoes , potato architecture .

Sam Brown 8:03

Yeah , timber's cool and I don't know if you guys ever looked at and I think it's something that's actually probably been almost proven , particularly in the past . You know , have you looked at those Norwegians ? Is it stave or starve churches ?

Gerard Dombroski 8:18

They're the ones that are all black generally .

Sam Brown 8:20

Yeah , but they are like timber-fram timber framed like timber , everything the timber shingle . I have a feeling they use like sawdust for insulation or something crazy like that as well . The concept of that is pretty cool .

Ben Sutherland 8:37

Absolute fire death trap . They look like witch houses .

Sam Brown 8:41

Yeah , they do look like witch houses , but you know , I little witch hats .

Gerard Dombroski 8:45

Is the black stained or is it charred Because ? You know , charring is a natural fireproofing .

Sam Brown 8:51

I think they're pretty old . It's probably just like patina . It might even be like you know lichens .

Gerard Dombroski 8:56

They just haven't washed it .

Sam Brown 8:58

Yeah , that's what my outdoor furniture looks like .

Gerard Dombroski 9:09

There's a good history of all timber buildings around the world , like the old japanese temples and stuff yeah , where they use like timber nails and yeah , yeah just that sort of stuff .

Sam Brown 9:19

I think that's , that's the .

Ben Sutherland 9:20

That's sort of the level of detail that I'd love to take this concept yeah , those all of the joints are kind of like slotted perfectly into position and it's so satisfying to watch .

Gerard Dombroski 9:33

It's kind of funny how we have all these initiatives to make buildings reusable and design them so they can come apart , and people have already mastered that , mastered it .

Ben Sutherland 9:45

Yeah , it just takes a little bit longer yeah , it's the labour aspect , really , isn't it ?

Gerard Dombroski 9:53

and the craftsmanship .

Sam Brown 9:54

There's no way you're getting a chippy in New Zealand to build in a Japanese manner .

Ben Sutherland 10:03

I've spent a large period of my life watching Japanese YouTube clips on timber construction . Nothing better than their chisels and their tools are just all so cool the handsaw and everything it's like oh my god do you reckon you could build like that ?

Ben Sutherland 10:26

a lot of it is like patience , and I guess you would probably want to go and learn from one of those masters for a period of time , because there's a lot to it , like the way that they do their set outs and everything is just . It's just phenomenal really . It's just completely different and it's all hand-drawn and hand-calculated and measured and cut . It's craftsmanship really , isn't it ? Yeah , it's craftsmanship . It's building a bit of joinery . It's far more like joinery than it is construction . So you'd probably want a bit of training . You'd attempt it and you'd probably pull off something half . Okay , I find it interesting that a bit of training , you'd attempt it and you'd probably pull off something .

Gerard Dombroski 11:05

I find it interesting that a lot of the newer ones they still have the same structure , um , but they're all kind of hidden . Ultimately , by the end of the project you don't see any of them . Yeah , whereas it's kind of interesting to put so much time in care .

Sam Brown 11:20

They're still building , like actually you don't see .

Gerard Dombroski 11:23

Yeah , what's it ?

Sam Brown 11:25

are they still building like that ? Yeah , yeah , definitely shit cool .

Ben Sutherland 11:28

Yeah , the ones that I like go on the youtube rabbit holes . It's like literally , like they cut the logs down , they select some trees . That's where they start . They start by like cutting down the trees and milling the timber and storing it in the yard for a year , and it's pretty insane .

Sam Brown 11:47

I mean that's sustainable right . That's the true description of vernacular .

Gerard Dombroski 11:54

Yeah , the use of the immediate their spec home essentially is still like the big 150 by 150 microframe timber posts everywhere , everywhere , all slotting , but it's just like cnc'd yeah , it's all done on a grid , but it's still still put together the same way yeah which is just epic that they hold on to that rather than doing what the rest of us are doing .

Sam Brown 12:25

rather than doing what the rest of us are doing , try and marry up as many foreign materials as humanly possible . I feel like that's the way we build .

Ben Sutherland 12:33

Yeah , it is , and I guess the whole point of it is like , well , the whole point of an every hat thing house would be to expose like the raw structure and you know , like it tells the story about how it was built and how long it's been there and the man hours uh it took to kind of assemble where the material . You can even like kind of understand a lot more about where the materials come from and and what it is . And I think so , if you , if you're gonna , you know , I guess that's what's amazing about those houses is it really does kind of uh , it's all pretty obvious when you walk in those spaces that you understand exactly how it was built and designed and everything . That's a .

Sam Brown 13:19

I think it's the honesty right , it's , it's the honesty of the building , I feel like . So much what's interesting . I saw a comment about sort of something about materiality and and is it something that we as architects or designers really consider ? And I think that that it is . I mean , it's a you know , it's a pretty common buzz term that we use all the time , and I think we really do think about materiality when we're designing but is it something that users appreciate and interact on a same , on a similar level ?

Sam Brown 13:51

I don't think so . You know , I don't think that they go and look at that westerpunt , you know , look out and go , holy shit , this whole thing's made out of concrete . It's like cantilevering on this , like helix form . How did they form this out of concrete ? Like they're not really looking at it that way . But back to your point being a , you know , if something's really pushed , you know , like if they are experiencing and everything else , then they have no , but no choice but to appreciate and interact with it , and I think that's quite a nice way of getting users and the consumers of buildings to kind of appreciate materiality a bit more .

Ben Sutherland 14:31

Yeah , so exposing the materials as opposed to covering them

The Impact of Architectural Design

Ben Sutherland 14:35

up ?

Gerard Dombroski 14:35

Yeah , architecture is so often peripheral , like by design is something that's in the back of your mind . It has to be pretty gnarly to come front of mind .

Sam Brown 14:49

Yeah , it has to punch you in the face a little bit for you to take note as like not a common , you know , not a casual sort of appreciator . I mean , I'd say that a lot of listeners and us all as architects , you know , I distinctly remember when we were at architecture school as well . You know you walk around with your head in the sky because you're just looking up at buildings all the time . Most people don't do that , but you know if something really is quite sensational or spectacular or interesting , then it , you know it draws in the general public . You know you're not going to have somebody come into a spec house in New Zealand and go oh wow , look at this beautiful use of a plasterboard .

Gerard Dombroski 15:28

That's crazy . I've never seen it before . Yeah , that beautiful jib board . What a unique use of jib board .

Ben Sutherland 15:37

Literally no one has ever seen that . That's so funny .

Sam Brown 15:43

Could you do a plasterboard house ?

Gerard Dombroski 15:45

Yeah , I guess , if you laminated enough plasterboard together , it would become .

Ben Sutherland 15:48

It would just melt in the rain , I mean hey , if you can do a cardboard cathedral , you can do a plasterboard house , surely ?

Sam Brown 15:58

Yeah , actually that's a really good proof . That's a really good kind of everything . Material is you know Shigeru Ban's use of cardboard ?

Gerard Dombroski 16:06

Yeah , that's a guy who knows how to run a concept .

Sam Brown 16:09

Yeah , yeah .

Gerard Dombroski 16:10

Often running a concept . He just scales up his models and you have to like pull everything back to make sure you follow that . The issue is when you start cutting corners and letting other materials come in . Yeah , issue is when you start cutting corners and letting other materials come in . Yeah , so , like the , the ice hotel is probably a really blatant example of like a successful single material project yep , because in that , all the beds , all the furniture , everything's carved out of ice , correct ?

Gerard Dombroski 16:39

yeah , yeah , cold slate but people , people go from lots of places over the world to stay in one of those , don't they ?

Ben Sutherland 16:47

How long do they last ? I ?

Gerard Dombroski 16:50

don't know A couple of months , the heart of winter .

Ben Sutherland 16:55

What about a tree ? I guess there's a lot of tree hut architecture on Airbnb and that sort of thing .

Gerard Dombroski 17:03

Yeah , people respond well to novelties . I think , well , maybe we , just as humans , need novelty to more novelty , architecture cut through .

Sam Brown 17:12

I think it's because everything else is so benign , right , yeah ?

Gerard Dombroski 17:17

and so few people are willing to follow a concept to the degree that is required to make something really impactful what we should be doing is .

Ben Sutherland 17:28

One way to design like this would be to probably do what shakira barn does and make a physical model of your or whatever it is cathedral or house or whatever and literally just scale it up . Yeah , I'm using the same material and everything yeah , shit .

Sam Brown 17:47

Yeah , I mean , I used . I used heaps of plaster when I was at uni for modeling .

Ben Sutherland 17:52

I don't there you go , but that's your job house yeah , well , that , exactly that's the past .

Sam Brown 18:00

I've already done it nice .

Gerard Dombroski 18:02

yeah , exactly . Well , it's a good way to like use the inherent qualities of a material . Like , if you're a ceramic house , like I don't know , you're probably going to need some archways and shit going on , yeah , yeah .

The Art of Process-Based Design

Sam Brown 18:18

Understanding the limitations of your medium . You know that's quite interesting . Like how does I was just going to say , gerard like for you , particularly with all your steel work , like you'd have you'd have a far better relationship or understanding of that than we probably do like , how does that sort of transform into your , into your art and your sculpture making and stuff ?

Gerard Dombroski 18:39

well , a lot of my stuff's designed around the process of making it , so I don't hydroform things . You set your parameters and then you hydroform and you kind of get what you're given Right . To me . It's the beauty of the process .

Ben Sutherland 18:57

Are you ever going to attempt a hydroformed house ? That would be pretty epic .

Gerard Dombroski 19:02

Yeah , yeah , I've been trying to weigh it up whether I make a little hydroformed uh office like a little , just a little studio , like a backyard office . If anybody out there wants a hydroformed office , let me go I do obviously but I just want to hydroform , like I was thinking to start off small , but it's still a fuckload of water . I like the size of the bed in my unit or something like 2.4 by 1.8 . But just a comically house-like shape , you know the gable and a door and a window .

Sam Brown 19:37

Traditional , like kid's drawing .

Gerard Dombroski 19:38

Yeah , kid's drawing . But then you fill it up with water and figure it out .

Ben Sutherland 19:43

Or and just hear me out you literally go and buy like a bouncy castle and you just pull it apart so you can use that as your template , and then just wow , wow that all together and blow that up a stainless steel bouncy castle would be pretty epic does it only work with stainless ?

Gerard Dombroski 20:01

nah , nah . I've just been starting to use stainless a lot . It's kind of nice to work with .

Ben Sutherland 20:07

Can you weld stainless as good ? Yeah , I mean you personally . Nah , just kidding .

Gerard Dombroski 20:15

Can you weld stainless ?

Ben Sutherland 20:17

I've welded twice before .

Gerard Dombroski 20:22

I like working with stainless . The colour feedback is quite nice , Like you can tell if your welds are going good on how colourful your weld is . Yeah , but yeah , I think , like you said before , like people , architects generally have an idea of materiality , but you maybe . Sometimes we apply materials to a face , versus like using the inherent qualities of material to make the wall and the I don't know what's left . Is the outcome like like a log cabin perhaps ? Is like a true example ?

Sam Brown 21:02

yeah , it's so true , I'd say that . I'd say that 99% of what we do and you know to your point is essentially like facadeism .

Gerard Dombroski 21:12

Yeah , we're decorating cakes to a large degree , totally .

Sam Brown 21:15

Yeah .

Gerard Dombroski 21:16

I don't know , I'm just quite seduced by process-based outcomes . That sucks , so the more I can . You can kind of trick yourself into unknown outcomes that way as well but how ?

Ben Sutherland 21:31

so what's the design process other than like hydroforming ? I kind of get , but what are some other ways you can achieve that , that design , that unknown design process ?

Sam Brown 21:42

melting stuff , yeah like yeah , yeah like melting plastics or even melting metals . Let it cool around a form I don't know .

Ben Sutherland 21:53

But you're not going to do that on a house size scale .

Sam Brown 21:56

Well , you know maybe Could you , yeah , but could you ? But if not , then why not on an elemental scale ? You know , like you could do that for furniture . To begin with , you know , start small and then you can start to move it up to okay , can we do like building elements as part of it ? Or , you know , does it become part of , like , generation of form ? You know what I mean . Like I think that's quite an interesting way of looking at it . You know , it's like I guess it's a it's quite an interesting way of looking at it . You know , it's like I guess it's a matter of probably changing the state of material , right , you know , because the majority of stuff that we deal with is solid and in its solid state it's rather limiting , but it's a matter of trying to take it to a , like a more liquid , or I don't know . Even can you turn something into a gas that then generates form ? I don't know .

Gerard Dombroski 22:52

You know , like .

Sam Brown 22:53

I think it's changing the actual , like natural state of it to generate something new , but it's still like it's the process , but it's still super honest , if you know what I mean .

Gerard Dombroski 23:02

Yeah , there's like those dome projects where they inflate like a bubble , like a canvas , yeah , and then pour concrete over it with rebar .

Sam Brown 23:11

There you go , that's gas . Inspired .

Ben Sutherland 23:15

There's . Who ? Is it One of them ? Maybe ? Oh , I can't remember Renzo Piano , I can't remember . But how they basically , like , made that log cabin and then formed the concrete around it , then burnt the timber oh cool , oh um for chapel . Yeah , I actually visited in germany once .

Gerard Dombroski 23:36

It's pretty yeah like stuff like that is just so processed like the . Yeah , that's like what interests me , a shite load .

Ben Sutherland 23:47

Yeah .

Sam Brown 23:53

That Zumthal one's pretty cool because it's sort of like it's the everything house times two . It's been completely built out of timber , yeah , and then completely built out of concrete , but it's the same building , but it's two very different . It would have been quite interesting to have had the timber form sort of there for let's say , a decade and the experience that people kind of have in using that for that period of time . And then all of a sudden he's like , oh , I'm going to encase it in concrete , burn it , and then it's the same building , but it's a completely different experience . It's a completely different internal environment .

Gerard Dombroski 24:28

That's quite a cool concept there's something interesting there about like a really long time frame . So , like I don't know , you're pouring in a meter of concrete a year or something into like a something that fills up well , I'm building a house out of house . House is more of a , the construction of it's , more of like a drawn-out spectacle yeah , they're probably even using like sculpture or not , is it topiary ?

Sam Brown 24:55

you know , like growing trees , you know you can grow trees to sort of like be in and around things yeah , controlling the growth of a tree to create form , or you know something like that .

Gerard Dombroski 25:05

It's quite quite cool there's a pleached cathedral somewhere in the world . I've seen pictures of .

Sam Brown 25:11

What's it called Jura pleaching ? Is that the method ?

Gerard Dombroski 25:14

Yeah , you just train them to grow . In certain ways you can pleach chairs and stuff if you just grow a tree and bend it .

Sam Brown 25:29

I want to find this now .

Gerard Dombroski 25:30

There's another epic process , one I remember on Arc Daily back in the day . They had another little single room but it was like straw bales stacked on top of each other . Then they encased it in concrete and then let the cows just eat the straw out . Really nice concrete . And then let the cows just eat the straw out really nice . Yeah , that's quite like a beautiful messy form , I think , with like a real sharp window face yeah that's quite cool .

Ben Sutherland 26:01

And then we've got old uh ishigami's restaurant house ishigami's I was gonna say that before where dig holes , yeah , and fill that full of concrete . I guess the common theme is just using either the material or the negative , or using the actual negative , the inverse , the inverse , yeah .

Gerard Dombroski 26:22

I'm going to start experimenting with steel as concrete formwork . Oh yeah , Just got a chair , sort of like a stool commission at the moment . So just like , maybe just playing with the thickness of your steel to see how much natural I guess it's high-swelling but with concrete .

Sam Brown 26:43

Right , and so is the final product going to be concrete , but you're not really controlling how precise it would be . No , is that the idea ?

Gerard Dombroski 26:53

I guess it'd be like a box frame and then you'd pick the thickness of the steel as to how , and then the weight of the concrete , how much that would bow out .

Ben Sutherland 27:05

But , wouldn't , you be able to .

Gerard Dombroski 27:07

Long time ago , with a very subtle movement in his moulds .

Ben Sutherland 27:13

Yeah , would you hydroform it first and then fill it full of concrete .

Gerard Dombroski 27:19

What's that ?

Ben Sutherland 27:20

You could hydroform it first if you wanted even more bulge .

Sam Brown 27:26

Yeah , in theory yes , but I'm probably more interested in , like the , the story of the process yeah , and and I like your idea of subtlety there as well , gerard I think , like everything we've sort of talked to so far all of the solutions , all of the results of these processes it'll be quite abrupt , but something like that . You kind of know that it's not the natural way that that material is supposed to be , but you're not quite sure why , you know . Yeah , I like that nature of subtlety to it .

Ben Sutherland 28:00

I don't know . I'm on the fence about that one . I'd need to be proven that . I guess the subtlety if done , done poorly , could just look like a mistake .

Sam Brown 28:09

Yeah .

Ben Sutherland 28:10

You potentially need to concept explain Someone's boxing wasn't built properly and blew out a little bit in this corner 100% .

Gerard Dombroski 28:24

I've had a few of those before . They're never mistakes . They're never mistakes .

Sam Brown 28:28

They're never mistakes , they're just design iterations . You know , experimentation .

Gerard Dombroski 28:34

How much shit have people passed off as like intentional , when it's been just a giant mistake ?

Sam Brown 28:39

Isn't that what we do as a profession post-rationalization ?

Gerard Dombroski 28:43

Yeah , it's like oh shit , I forgot to tell you a door .

Sam Brown 28:46

Oh no it's about enclosure .

Gerard Dombroski 28:50

It's tough oh shit , I forgot to tell you a door .

Ben Sutherland 28:51

Oh , now it's about enclosure .

Gerard Dombroski 28:52

It's tough live decorating cakes . I forgot to give you a window . Oh no , this room's the cave . It's the narrative of the space .

Sam Brown 28:58

This is your gimp den , but it's on the top floor . I'm sure that was in the brief .

Gerard Dombroski 29:06

No , oh , my bad genius they don't go super hard on the single material . But you know the tree hotel and somewhere in scandinavia where they have just a bunch of real elaborate um , I guess hotel structures floating around in the bush , yeah , yeah , there's like a mirror one which is like just a mirror cube on a single tree .

Sam Brown 29:37

Oh yeah , I know the one . That's pretty cool .

Gerard Dombroski 29:40

It's like full mirror outside , full timber inside , and then you sort of see the trunk coming through the space .

Sam Brown 29:47

I'll say one material we haven't discussed which I think has a lot of potential is bamboo as well . For that , everything use .

Ben Sutherland 29:56

I knew you were going to bring up bamboo , the bamboo man .

Sam Brown 29:59

Come on , I thought it had to be .

Ben Sutherland 30:00

It's good . Yeah , it has to be done . I mean like in theory , that's what my thesis was .

Sam Brown 30:07

It's what it started . Yeah , the concept started around that and then sort of it evolved out a little bit . But then I had that I designed that house in nepal which was all bamboos , sands , the concrete footings , and which was pretty . That was that . I guess that was a proof of concept . Like all the windows , doors , the furniture structure , everything was all bamboo , bamboo pins . The only thing that was plumbing material , isn't it ?

Sam Brown 30:36

bamboo plumbing ? Yeah , the only thing wasn't was electrical . You can't . You can't run a charge through bamboo unless someone else someone knows how to . You'll crack code , maybe run it through your pipe .

Gerard Dombroski 30:48

What was that ? You run it through your pipes ? Yeah , you could do . Yeah , water conducting .

Ben Sutherland 30:54

Yeah , water conducting .

Sam Brown 30:56

I've cracked it . That's another one . One thing that we haven't talked about is maybe shifting from that idea of maybe material so much , but still in that vein of the everything house .

Ben Sutherland 31:06

Ben , you've got a note here on color well , yeah , the everything , the all , one color house . This reminds me of the . Gerard dombrowski attempted this once , didn't you , gerard ? How'd that work out ?

Gerard Dombroski 31:20

well , I moved jobs halfway through that project so I wasn't there to drive the train . What color ?

Sam Brown 31:28

were you going for gerard ?

Gerard Dombroski 31:30

full yellow it was a yellow yellow but everything being yellow , so it's pretty epic .

Ben Sutherland 31:37

The problem that the thing that happened was just finding a urine yellow toilet is was just too .

Sam Brown 31:46

Wait , wait , wait . Did you say urine yellow ? Was that the entire concept ?

Gerard Dombroski 31:53

Yes , it was .

Ben Sutherland 31:55

It had like yellow tiles , yellow floor tiles , yellow everything .

Sam Brown 32:00

A little bit soft yellow room . Oh yeah , nice . I mean , I think that's a great concept and maybe it's not done to that extreme . But you know , have you seen that project , that Seven Colourful Little Houses project in Christchurch ?

Gerard Dombroski 32:18

Is that a recent one ?

Sam Brown 32:20

Recently completed one . I mean , that's sort of of that ilk .

Ben Sutherland 32:24

Oh yes .

Sam Brown 32:25

The designs are all exactly the same . I think they may be pivoted about 90 degrees to sight , but the only thing that differentiates them is the colour . But they've been true to the colour selection . So the entire facade or the entire exterior is one colour , and then that's brought through into the interior , I think in the kitchen and in the joinery , and I really like that , because what they've taken is something that could be incredibly benign . You know , it's very much a spec house , yeah , but with just one yeah , kind of like yeah , one design decision that's made it such a successful project , and so , yeah , it looks like it was well executed as well .

Ben Sutherland 33:05

I think it's because it's's quite well designed and they've used quite good products internally , so I think they've pulled it off really well .

Sam Brown 33:15

Yeah , I love it . I think it's really cool .

Pushing Architectural Boundaries

Sam Brown 33:18

Also , good colour selections . I think you could kind of it could be less successful if you're a bit too garish with your colour choice .

Gerard Dombroski 33:28

M-V-R-DDV . The Dutch office . Yeah , they are surely the kings of colour . Lots of like massive , monotone projects , just massive colour-blocking entire buildings , and I like that because I think we shy , particularly in new zealand .

Sam Brown 33:48

Fuck , just getting back from central otago like there is no blandish color palette yeah , yeah , this color palette in the world , it's all so similar I mean we're so terrified of the use of color here . It's , you know , it's . Yeah , it's shocking , I think . I think I mean we've talked about it several times on the podcast , but I think it's because in general , we're pretty plain and boring .

Ben Sutherland 34:14

Isn't it crazy that all it takes is like a building to be one full colour for it to stand out . How is that a thing ?

Sam Brown 34:23

That's crazy , but it's also commitment to the bit , and I think this is the same with the everything house and in terms of materiality as well . You , you can't half-ass a concept like this . You know like you can't go , I'm gonna do an everything else out of timber , but there's gonna be , like you know , elements of other materials . It's just not gonna work . Like , if you want this to be truly successful and it's exactly the same with color is commit wholeheartedly . You know like , if you're like I want a splash of color , then all you're doing is you've got like a feature wall or some bullshit . You know like , what you really need is like full commitment . Like , like Gerard , like your full piss yellow house .

Ben Sutherland 35:03

You're in yellow .

Sam Brown 35:04

You're in yellow .

Gerard Dombroski 35:04

You're not sorry , sorry we had yellow perspex light up ceiling as well yeah , I think so .

Ben Sutherland 35:12

Yeah , all right , at least that got done . Did this get built ? Yeah , it got built . Yeah , we built it . That's all I know about it because I built the thing oh cool .

Gerard Dombroski 35:24

The kitchen joinery unit was pretty epic . It was like particle board joinery . The idea was you go inside the joinery and then it's like the womb , entirely yellow mass . Then I went inside of my brain rehab centre .

Ben Sutherland 35:44

It's complex wow , yeah , the toilet got cold , unfortunately .

Sam Brown 35:50

I was going to say did they commit 100% or were there aspects of too hard basket ?

Gerard Dombroski 35:55

yeah , the toilet was that , it there's always ways around these things , like if you did like a we were going to paint it , but Gerard did leave like a resin uricryl lasts a long time on that . But you could also like re-fire it , you could glaze it . Yeah , all of these things like require you to go a little bit further , or quite a bit further , to like re-glaze a whole toilet .

Sam Brown 36:19

Another option is coming back to our sort of you know things generating over time . You could just never clean it .

Ben Sutherland 36:26

Yeah , exactly .

Gerard Dombroski 36:29

It's probably yellow now let it naturally patina no , you're not wrong that was the idea right and I wanted to get all like the taps sandblasted and repowder coated . Oh , would have been amazing yeah well you just got to do it again .

Ben Sutherland 36:50

Try and pull it off , pull it off properly .

Sam Brown 36:53

It's funny , I mean it awes me clients that are willing to commit to that . I think it's the hardest thing is finding people . You know , gerard , you're talking about doing hydroforming , a studio . I mean you can do that because you can kind of do it for yourself . But it's finding someone that's as committed to the bit or as committed to the concept as as you is the tricky part , right yeah , you do need brave people .

Gerard Dombroski 37:16

When those guys were were brave , yeah , so nice . The stars do need to align sometimes , but it goes both ways . Isn it Like you have to exude confidence for the bit ?

Sam Brown 37:31

Oh , absolutely .

Gerard Dombroski 37:32

It's got to be believable If you're half-assing your side , then there's no way you're ever going to sell the idea .

Sam Brown 37:38

I think that's the hard part as designers , in particular in New Zealand , is we're sort of ultimately pigeonholed into a lane , whether that be by the people that we work for or the clients that we have or the design guidelines or you know covenants or anything like that . You know there's , there's definitely scope , like you definitely can push it and you can do this crazy shit , but I think like too often we don't think that way because you know , the benign is so prevalent I personally think that I just struggle to think that way and so , like coming up with the actual concepts , the hardest part I guess .

Ben Sutherland 38:22

Like and it takes a while to like , gerard , you're just amazing at it you've got like the I want to push it to the extreme , let's test this . And then all of a sudden , after you know a small period of time , you've got this concept . That's kind of like exploring your ideas , which is this is something we've talked about numerous times before in the pod . But actually , like coming to those conclusions , like I'm constantly asking myself what do I want to test ? Like what is it I want to test , what is ? So coming to those , answering those questions and coming to those conclusions is probably the hardest part yeah , I think it's all .

Gerard Dombroski 39:02

It is a muscle , like all design thinking , I think , is muscle the more you like . I've actively tried to trick myself into coming up with weird ideas constantly for years yeah yeah I think you're , you're well trained at it .

Sam Brown 39:23

But I also think back to your point , ben is and I've struggled with this as well as you want to come up with ideas , but I also I often find you sort of limit yourself because you , because you're not confident enough to just go fuck it , I'm just gonna do so , I'm just gonna do it , whereas like drad , I think , like you're a little bit more , I'll just do it and I'll just test it out yeah , like you're probably less , correct me if I'm wrong , but I kind of feel like you're maybe less afraid of the concept failing , then I think maybe I am and maybe you are ben well , I think like the building side .

Ben Sutherland 40:02

maybe I'm just a little bit too practical sometimes , so I'm always thinking about like the best way to build something . And that best way to build something is always like comes back to what you can actually get built in this country , based on my current knowledge , so I don't actually other than like different ways to put something together . It always sits within the same kind of parameter , whereas Gerard's just like let's just give something completely different to go , which I think is epic , and yeah . Yeah , still got to get shit built , though , don't we ?

Gerard Dombroski 40:42

it's all about making other models to me , the making part is architecture . To me , like um , I don't know , everyone can have mean ideas , but if you can't get it built , it's like how much is that render worth ?

Sam Brown 41:01

yeah , well , that's it right . Like paper architecture , I mean to be fair , there's there's very much a realm of architecture that is purely paper . You know , there's some people that have kind of pegged their entire career on paper architecture . But realizing it , I think , is the true uh success of of an architectural concept yeah , like old zaha , I guess 10 years of . Yeah .

Gerard Dombroski 41:26

But if your old man runs an oil company . It's probably .

Sam Brown 41:32

You've got a bit of financial backing .

Gerard Dombroski 41:34

Financial backing .

Sam Brown 41:35

A biaga was like that Years and years of competition , entries and concepts and just ideas , but full confidence in those ideas .

Gerard Dombroski 41:45

Yeah .

Sam Brown 41:45

Full confidence and belief in your ability and it just and it pays off . But I think it takes a special person to kind of yeah , you know , not negatively , but carry an ego for that long without , like , an actual success or without an actual result . I reckon pretty hard yeah , I remember .

Gerard Dombroski 42:05

I remember a friend a painting friend saying that persistence will always win , that they can't get rid of us . If they tried , we're weeds .

Ben Sutherland 42:14

I don't know , sometimes it feels like it's just going to be easier to own the oil company and build your own architecture .

Gerard Dombroski 42:28

Yeah , I'm sorry . Definitely definitely probably the easier . Easier way to go about things .

Sam Brown 42:34

That's one option , yeah , all right , let's start drooling yeah . Where's ?

Gerard Dombroski 42:42

your property sale .

Sam Brown 42:43

Digging for gold . Can we do an oil ?

Ben Sutherland 42:45

house , let's open up those old quarries .

Sam Brown 42:47

Can we do an oil house ? Let's open up those old quarries Because lots of stuff derived from oil . How far can you stretch this concept ?

Ben Sutherland 42:54

Yeah , wow , Rammed earth right . Do a rammed earth house Somehow Good at insulation values as well .

Gerard Dombroski 43:06

Yeah , they'll straw , bale , lime , lime . Well , just a very earth house . You know , just yeah why lots of people go down the the , I guess earth ship that's that one uses , it's a whole movement .

Sam Brown 43:18

You know , like that's , that's a whole proven thing .

Gerard Dombroski 43:22

So there's yeah , everyone , I guess , angle towards these things , but then at some point they might drift away yeah , it's .

Sam Brown 43:31

I mean , and I think what the reason that you drift away is back to what you're saying , ben is reality has to come into it a little bit , you know , and that's you know . Back to that , you know , you kind of drift away from your idea because you're like I actually have to build this thing or I have to make it real or something . And that's why I like that Robert Bruno house , because I don't think he cared about it being functional or even like a real realisation . He just kept welding shit on top of other stuff until he came up with a form you know .

Gerard Dombroski 44:04

It's amazing how consistent the aesthetic is like for such a large structure like , like , right down to the the smaller details handrails , and like window mullions yeah like all the lines .

Sam Brown 44:20

Yeah , exactly the same as if you saw the building from 100 , 100 meters away yeah , seeing it from 100 meters versus seeing it from like , yeah , a meter , it's the same same form . Is that we're getting it ?

Gerard Dombroski 44:31

yeah , yeah , like the design language is super consistent . Yeah , I like that .

Ben Sutherland 44:36

It's just how these new owners in their overlay flooring how can we , how can we get someone to pay us to build , or at least pay for the building of , like a pavilion or something , so we can actually like experiment with some of these ideas , the , the , everything house , the , all one material and all the same color , I mean the brick bay .

Sam Brown 45:00

Folly is sort of like like that in a way , isn't it ? It's sort of a a mechanism to to true , to you know , to test things out and to do something .

Gerard Dombroski 45:12

Yeah , do something . Should we enter ?

Sam Brown 45:14

one started to look the same yeah , it would be cool if there was more , I mean , but I guess there's the risk of it becoming too sculptural , though you know at what point is . Is it a sculpture and is ?

Gerard Dombroski 45:26

is it ?

Sam Brown 45:26

architecture . Well , but I I'm but you know what I mean like not to say that sculpture can't be architecture , but , like you know , is it just a form that's not necessarily habitable , like , or how do you ? I mean shit , this is a conversation , definitely for another time , like we need to draw the line at sculpture , at sculpture versus architecture what is habitable ?

Gerard Dombroski 45:50

can you crawl through your hallway ?

Sam Brown 45:54

your giants , your giant stick man . Can you crawl through those ? Do you have to stand upright ?

Gerard Dombroski 45:58

through a room , definitely not well pod .

Sam Brown 46:05

I grew up in a bedroom that I couldn't stand up and it was great .

Gerard Dombroski 46:07

Yeah , I guess lots of little loft , tiny house loft , not standing up in that this is .

Ben Sutherland 46:14

This is a good segue , actually , for are we going to test our new , new little segment

The Debate on Decorative Elements

Ben Sutherland 46:19

? Hated or love it ? Yeah , all right . Well , if anyone else I don't know if you guys have got any ideas , but I was thinking that , similar to the sculpture I hated or love it , the the arcade , like decorative architectural elements . Is that a hate or a love ? I mean , like , look around , looking around you're talking classical moment . Yeah , but it doesn't need to be classical . It can be like a modern interpretation .

Gerard Dombroski 46:48

There's just there's just no decorative elements in buildings these days yeah I think it's really I think , yeah , I'm all for the hate it do we just hate ?

Ben Sutherland 47:00

do we hate decorative elements now ?

Gerard Dombroski 47:02

well , I think people have been taught to hate . Well , architects , particularly , have been taught by universities to . Modernist is the direction , whereas maybe we're all bullied into it .

Ben Sutherland 47:11

We were literally just talking about exposing the structure . It's hard to backtrack .

Gerard Dombroski 47:19

I am actually all for complexity . Thomas Heatherwick's book where he's yarning about general people respond better to like older buildings that have like rhythm .

Sam Brown 47:32

Ornamentation yeah .

Gerard Dombroski 47:34

Yeah , it comes with like super intricate stone relief .

Sam Brown 47:38

Do you think that's because it's easier to appreciate , like the craftsmanship and the workmanship ?

Gerard Dombroski 47:45

No , I think they're like digestible , like right sheer rhythm , but then the complexity like is like just a nice thing to look at , like your brain needs an element of complexity to like focus in on , whereas a purely glass box is , you know , might have some fancy detailing , but but nobody can see it .

Sam Brown 48:08

Yeah right , so we're really talking about when you say decorative elements , it's ornamentation , it's ornamentation ?

Ben Sutherland 48:16

Yeah , it is , and there's some amazing examples of exactly what Gerard was talking about , where it is more of an intricate , a sculptural , whatever decorative element , but it's also like a part of the , the structure itself . So you can kind of combine those two things , I guess , like steel's probably , and even timber , if done well , uh is amazing at that sort of net , has that natural beauty , uh . But it's just . It feels like it's like a bit of a lost art that back in the day it was just the norm so everyone had it everywhere , even like the old school villas , you know , and now it's just not even a part of the process , so no one is willing to pay for it interestingly .

Sam Brown 49:02

I think , though , if you know when we're thinking of , like , hot or not , love it or hate it . I would hate ornamentation on modern day architecture though , because it would feel too forced .

Ben Sutherland 49:14

But would the architecture be different if it had ornamentation ? You know it'd be designed with it integrated .

Sam Brown 49:20

It could have been if we'd thought about this , you know , generations ago . But if we're thinking about , like , implementing this now , you know how could this evolve , moving forward , the entire architectural style would need to change to to support it . You know , because I think everything now is designed to look so simple and basic that to design that out , you'd have to completely , like , come up with a new design language .

Gerard Dombroski 49:46

You know what I mean you know it's not like you're coming around and throwing up Corinthian columns everywhere .

Ben Sutherland 49:51

No , well , that'd be nice . I wish I was .

Gerard Dombroski 49:58

I guess postmodern was a literal reusing of some of those objects . But there's a middle ground where you can reference these shapes and forms , but postmodernism looked at it on .

Sam Brown 50:09

There's a middle ground where you can reference these shapes and forms , but postmodernism looked at it on more of a building scale rather than like an elemental ornamentation type scale , really , didn't it ? I mean , art Nouveau would be a good description of pure ornamentation .

Gerard Dombroski 50:22

Yeah yeah . Art Nouveau is probably an example of something that , in my mind , still holds a lot of weight , and you could run that aesthetic now and it would be just as awesome .

Sam Brown 50:34

Like yeah , that's who's who's , who's bold enough to , I'll give it a go .

Gerard Dombroski 50:43

Well , I mean yeah , my example of like modern um automation , I guess , is maybe , maybe just in people's use of brick , which you see a lot in australia , like , yeah , like malbright and john wattle , yeah , like all using quite more complex different layers like john wattle did a proposal , or was it for the world expo or remember as a lecture a while ago , but super complex , cast bricks and then just repeating that mold over and over again . So it's still making a brick in the same way , just sending them some molds yeah , well , another example a super complex , but it's then it's like it's quite readable because it's over like a whole face .

Ben Sutherland 51:29

So it brings that , I guess , modernist aesthetic , but bringing some real gnarly complexity yeah , another example I was thinking of is actually another one from you , gerard , this project that we're working on together at the moment , and we had a huge discussion . I was totally against these steel eyelids that you really wanted to put on and I was like there's no way , there's no way we're putting these eyelids on . They're basically like curved steel with , like you know , a little bit of I wouldn't say call them complex , but a nice rhythm , and I was against it . And then I was like , nah , let me model it , let me put it on there , and now I'm like I can't see the building without it .

Sam Brown 52:13

It's just what was your ? Intricate part to back to the the loving and hating ornamentation . What was your aversion to it like ? Why did you dislike it to begin with ?

Ben Sutherland 52:24

because I the the parts where the islands are , the actual building itself has set back quite a bit . And I just wanted it to begin with because I the the parts where the eyelids are , the actual building itself is set back quite a bit and I just wanted it to disappear . But gerard wanted it to read as one full object and so hence the eyelids , and now that the eyelids are on there , like , yeah , 100 agree . So I don't know , that's just another example . I'm actually , I'm actually have been not into any kind of decorative architecture pretty much my whole career until now .

Ben Sutherland 52:57

I'm becoming more yeah , I'm becoming more and more . I just think like there's some it's a bit of a lost beauty and yeah , I see my neighbor out there spending a week painting is nice picket fence . I'm like , okay , well , look , you know , if there's a bit more you know beauty and you're you're a bit more proud of your , your buildings , then maybe you'd spend a bit more time looking after it as well . I don't know .

Sam Brown 53:23

So I think for me , like I appreciate ornamentation and its context and history , but I don't unless it's done incredibly well , I don't really like it . Now , I don't like eaves . I find eaves too much ornamentation .

Ben Sutherland 53:40

Yeah . I didn't like eaves , but eaves are definitely back in . For me , that's a good one , actually . We'll bring that on up in there .

Gerard Dombroski 53:48

I love a really big eave .

Ben Sutherland 53:50

Yeah , I love a big eave ?

Gerard Dombroski 53:52

I don't think I like any medium-sized eaves , but I really like no eave or really big eave .

Ben Sutherland 54:01

Have you owned a house without an eave ? It kind of scares me .

Sam Brown 54:04

My last house had no eaves and I was like , ah , it's impervious , it kind of scares me .

Ben Sutherland 54:06

My last house had no eaves and I was like , ah , it's impervious , it's impervious . But , when you get really bad rain , there's just something like a little bit satisfying about a roof that actually just kicks the water right off your walls .

Sam Brown 54:18

Ah , you're just being grossy , no no no .

Ben Sutherland 54:23

It'll probably last an extra 50 years . So I don't know . We've got two now . We've got two . Where do we stand on decorations ? I am pro , pro and Sam's no .

Gerard Dombroski 54:39

I'm no yeah better luck next time . You are the weakest link and as your punishment you have to put ornamentation in your next project , all right .

Sam Brown 54:52

Hate it or love it Eves .

Ben Sutherland 54:53

Eves somehow slipped in there . Needs more discussion , but pro Eves .

Sam Brown 54:58

Pro . I'm anti as well . I'm 0-2 . Damn , it'd be boring if we agreed on all of these .

Gerard Dombroski 55:09

That's great . Just to dig into the eaves quickly , I think eaves without spouting is awesome , like if you deal with your rainwater at the ground , gravel trap or something Zunthor's serpentine , the photos of it in the rain , where it's like square waterfall . It's like just like square waterfall . Where it's like all bucking down . It's just just moody .

Ben Sutherland 55:32

You wouldn't want it somewhere where you're walking under , but the vibes , it's like a fireplace nice nice , oh well , that's , that's good pod , yeah , and I'm looking forward to hearing some results about what the audience thinks are pro decorations or pro eaves . We'll find out .

Sam Brown 55:54

All right Is that the pod . Catch you next time . Ka-chow Ka-chow , ka-chow Ka-chow .