A Modern Ruin: Chelmer River House by Furminger.

River House is a project conceived on a metaphor of a ruin. Located in Chelmer, Brisbane, local architecture practice Furminger has wrapped an existing timber weatherboard home with heavy masonry walls to form a surprising and functional programmatic layout.

Tilt-up concrete walls intersect the site and carve out public and private courtyard gardens that in turn create new entries into rooms through garden spaces. For Furminger, the goal is to encourage the inhabitants to engage with the surrounding climate, landscape and structure.

The main garden walls wrap the internal rooms of the existing building, creating a structure that appears to have no glass nor function. Adding to the ruin metaphor, the solid physical mass embodies the endurance of a ruin—reduced to what lasts.

The result creates a powerful silhouette. “The intention was to create a building with a presence all of its own, to loom with physical power, embodying a geometric order with primitive structural force,” Christopher Furminger explains. “Heavy brick, tort concrete, pure dark void, containing the endurance of the ruin—reduced to only what lasts.”

Within the walls programmatic organisation and careful additions allow much of the home to operate as a series of smaller apartment type dwellings. Through the use of separate entries, private courtyards and provisional services, the space is set up for maximum customisation as the needs of the family grow and change.

Material exploration led to the use of commercial materials and construction techniques. Precast concrete for the floors combined with the concrete panel walls. Through detail and innovative construction methods services were roughed into the tilt-up concrete panels, including all plumbing and electrical fixtures—removing the need for layering trades. Stones and sands were collected and matched to masonry finishes as the project went on to further link the site to the building materials.

By maintaining as much of the existing building fabric as possible and working with the existing plan, a strategy to wrap the building with the new structure and maintain the central spaces within the home was developed. This enabled the family to live on site during the construction of the newly built works.

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[Images courtesy of Furminger. Photography by David Chatfield.]