What lies beneath
The place where you used to simply store stuff is finding its own glamorous footing. By Stephen Crafti
There was a time when basements were synonymous with storage–a place to keep rarely used and barely missed things.
Over the past decade or so, they’ve been morphing into a variety of uses – from parking cars to creating wellness centres.
And rather than being dank, dark spaces where few would dare to venture, they’re now on a par with other home spaces–well-lit with natural or artificial light, and well ventilated.
Melbourne-based B.E Architecture regularly includes basement car parking in new homes and renovations. One house, in a heritage streetscape in bayside Albert Park, only retains the heritage-listed Victorian façade. “We literally reimagined the period house, keeping in mind the scale of the rooms and the ceiling heights,” says architect and B.E Architecture director Andrew Piva.
Spread over four levels incorporating both a basement and rooftop terrace, the house appears contemporary, but also with a sense of its past. The basement includes a double car stacker that accommodates four cars, together with a 20-metre-long swimming pool.
“The key to activating these basements is through natural light and ventilation,” says Piva, pointing out the generous lightwell that extends across three levels (with a separate staircase leading to the roof terrace). The architect also created a berm in the courtyard with a cluster of maples that activate all levels, together with an art installation by British artist Nathan Coley.
While there’s sufficient space in the courtyard for a couple of chairs, the drawcard in the basement is the pool, a gymnasium, a bathroom and an onsen – a Japanese ritual of cleaning oneself before entering the steam room.
“Using the basement for other uses such as cars takes the pressure off finding room for certain uses, be it a rumpus room or a media room, says Piva. “If the budget permits, it makes sense to use this space wisely, not just for storage.”
B.E Architecture often locates laundries at basement level, allowing for a drying cupboard that may be impractical on upper levels. “But it’s about providing light to these basements–that’s the key to unlocking them,” he adds.
Fellow Melburnian Davidov Architects also made the most of a basement for a large family home in Toorak. The monumental concrete house features kitchen and living areas at ground level with the bedrooms, including the main bedroom, located on the first floor. A steep driveway leads into the basement, which provides parking for five cars and a media room, with a kitchenette and a full bathroom situated under the stairs that lead to the front door on the level above.
The basement in the Toorak house also has an impressive wine cellar, with a glass-fronted wall that allows each bottle to be fully displayed. “It was referred to as a chandelier, almost akin to a piece of jewellery,” says architect and director Robert Davidov. “The backlighting is higher than usual to create that jewel-like quality.”
Davidov also mirrored the design of the wine cellar with the home’s steel-and-glass front door, creating a visual link between the two levels.
For Davidov and many other architects, basements are increasingly viewed more like a front door than a back-of-house space. “It’s the first thing that is seen when they arrive home, so it needs to be more than just a soulless space,” adds Davidov.
For a house in Sydney’s Birchgrove, designed by Studio ZAWA in collaboration with Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, the basement includes almost everything but a place to park cars. The owners of the late-Victorian home work in the carbon offsets industry and prefer to park on the street than use the basement for cars, says architect and Studio ZAWA director, Colebee Wright.
“It’s a fairly modest plot (approx. 300 square metres) so we were limited with our site coverage. Setting aside space for cars would have been 18 square metres,” Wright says. Instead of cars, the architects included the glass walls that line the swimming pool, allowing for borrowed light, as well as a separate bathroom and steam room. There’s also a gymnasium that doubles as a Pilates studio/gym.
On the other side of this basement level is a self-contained scullery that is reached directly via a set of stairs from the kitchen, and includes wine storage and an area for preparing meat. The architects also included a ‘man cave’ behind one of the panelled walls adjacent to the gym that’s lined with drills and hammers. “We didn’t want the basement to feel dark or cavernous, so it was important for the swimming pool to pierce the basement and rely on borrowed light,” says Wright. Along with his colleagues, he was mindful of heritage overlays in the street, and not pushing the building envelope beyond given height limits.
The owners, who regularly travel to Europe and Japan, were also keen to inject some of the experiences they had encountered in their hotel stays, many of which have saunas and wellness centres. Accessed via a lift or set of stairs, the basement in the Birchgrove house offers a place for the owners to escape, chill out, or spend some quiet time before the day begins.
This is an extract from an article that appears in print in our thirteenth edition, Page 106 of Winning Magazine with the headline: “What lies beneath”. Subscribe to Winning Magazine today.
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