In the small town of Federal, just outside Byron Bay, a black monolith is cut into a hillside. Standing in stark contrast to traditional rural architecture elsewhere in the region, Federal House displays a dramatic, bunker-like façade that encloses a warm and intimate internal sanctuary.

“At distance, the building is recessive, a black shadow within a vast landscape,” says Kim Bridgland, of Melbourne architectural firm Edition Office, who co-designed the home with colleague Aaron Roberts. “On closer inspection, a highly textural outer skin of thick timber battens contrasts the earlier sense of a machined tectonic, allowing organic material gestures to drive the dialogue with physical human intimacy.”

Within the folding hills of its hinterland site, Bridgland says the home “acts as both an experiential container for this place and as a conditioning object, consciously aware of its outsider status within the traditional ownership and legacy of this landscape”.

“It is purposefully foreign to its Bundjalung-country landscape and the deep time frame of the Indigenous heritage in which it’s located,” he adds.

Constructed in black-pigmented concrete and veiled in black timber battens, the house appears closed and protected from the outside. However, the tactile expression and pattern created by the battens makes the exterior appear to breathe as you circle it, save for one side that cantilevers off a steep slope. Inside, rural views are captured through the solid timber battens affixed to a wide verandah.

“The deep verandah allows for a shadow gradient to emerge between inner and outer thresholds, enhancing the sense of sanctuary from the surroundings and its variable weather conditions,” says Bridgland. “It allows one to be outside in torrential rain and avoid the burning midday sun.”

The tightly controlled envelope of the layout allows modestly scaled living spaces to expand into a covered outdoor living area via large sliding glass doors. “This expansion and contraction allow shifts between the intimate and the public, between immediate landscape and the expansive unfolding landscape to the north,” says Bridgland.

Within the home, dark wood and black-pigmented concrete are offset with lighter blackbutt floors, timber-lined ceilings and tan leather furniture, while the three bedrooms and black granite tiled bathrooms arranged along the eastern flank of the house are described by Bridgland as “enclaves of withdrawal, rest and solitude”.

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Anchoring the project to the sloping site and positioned beneath the main living floor is an all-black concrete pool. A glimpse of the water below can be gained through fern fronds planted in a double-height garden space positioned within the entry vestibule and lit via an opening in the roof.

“The mirrored horizon at the end of the pool draws one to its edge, and back again to the garden platform, its cavernous volume resembling more closely a freshwater swimming hole than a classic lap pool,” says Bridgland.

Fresh air is drawn across the cooler pool surface and into the upper verandah spaces. “This natural ventilation helps to stabilise the ambient temperature throughout the home,” explains Bridgland, “and is supplemented with a ceiling fan for hotter days and a fireplace for winter.”

Serving as a holiday home, with the possibility of later conversion into a retirement refuge, Federal House was designed by the architects from Edition Office to be a tranquil sanctuary for their Melbourne-based clients while standing as a sensitive architectural representation of the firm’s environmental philosophy.

Edited extract from Modern Houses in Black (Images Publishing Group) by Susan Redman, out now.

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