We were so pleased and delighted to be awarded The Malcolm Moir and Heather Sutherland Award for Residential Architecture – Houses (New) for Kampung Batu Bigga (Rocky Knoll Shelter) at the recent 2024 ACT AIA awards night in Canberra. This is a testament to the whole team of people that contributed to the rammed earth home across the years – sub-consultants, builder, and sub-contractors. Sarah Truscott designed and documented the home during her time at Philip Leeson Architects, before taking on the construction stage advice under the banner of STA. David Braithwaite and his team at Braithwaite Building did an exceptional job of seeing this project to life on site.
We will leave here the words of the jury, upon Kampung Batu Bigga receiving this prestigious award:
“Very seldomly projects arise from an inextricable connection to site that approaches the poetic. Inspired by rudimentary trekking shelters, this house heightens the experience of the rocky knoll.
Working across scales, Truscott and Leeson have elegantly carved a shelf from the knoll with calligraphic rock walls working as retaining and low landscape walls. Nested within this zone a lyrical interplay of sliding rammed earth walls, dynamic roof and corrugated metal clad pods define a sensory journey across the site.
The simple profiled gable roof pushes and pulls with the wall and pods, aligning and then easing away to the landscape, defining interstitial nooks with the rocky site walls, and unfolding to open terraces that intersect the landscape. The oblique roof geometry arcs down to offer an intimate scale to the terrace, whilst a tension with the floating rainwater heads celebrates the balletic capture of rainwater.
At the personal scale, lyrical painted steel rod frames interweave with plywood joinery, working in counterpoint to the earthy tactility of the rammed earth walls.
Exuding a simplicity and rawness that seems to have been formed from the site forces, this project delights with elegant details and lightness of touch.”