Freshwater Project | Acacia Joinery

Client Needs

The rear of the home comprises a single storey, open-plan pavilion taking full advantage of the wide block and northern aspect. The generous ceiling heights, accentuated by an impressive skylight and floor to ceiling glazing, imbues the home’s interiors with natural light and creates a sense of interior expanse. A verdant central courtyard provides striking internal vistas and maintains a visual link between separated living areas, in which family members can pursue their own activities, while maintaining a sense of connectivity.

Acacia was commissioned to manufacture an array of fixed and double hung windows, and several floor to ceiling sliding door units in Flooded Gum with a natural finish. The units were designed to be a significant feature of the home; the warmth of the timber contrasting with the extensive use concrete and brick and bringing balance to the Brutalist forms.

Challenges

While timber was certainly to be a feature of the home, Acacia’s brief was to design and manufacture windows and doors that would maximise the glazed area and minimise the surrounding timber frame, ensuring unobstructed sightlines and a refined, streamlined appearance.

In keeping with this aesthetic, and to enhance indoor/outdoor connectivity, the large sliding door unit for the open plan living area was to be frameless. To achieve this, tracks were to be fixed directly into the concrete floor and ceiling. The challenge for Acacia, in this instance, is the inability to test the doors and tracks in the factory prior to installation, leaving little margin for error and adjustment.

The elevated ceiling heights of this project, the floor-to-ceiling design of the windows and door units and the requirement for double glazing resulted in some of our largest and heaviest panels to date. Several of the individual glazed panels weighed in at 420kgs, providing challenges for transport and installation for Acacia and the build team at Skope Constructions.

Solutions

Acacia worked in close partnership with the architects throughout the design phase, developing custom engineered solutions to realise their design intention. Ultimately, the glazed units were fitted into the timber frames using a custom pocket system and wide glazing beads were used to create a continuous sightline through the glazed panels.

Communication with the build team ensured timely delivery of windows and doors at each stage of the build. Cranes were used to lift and manoeuvre the sizeable and weighty panels over the house to facilitate installation.

Installation of the window and door units including the frameless sliding door was seamless. The doors rolled smoothly despite their considerable size and weight. This is testament to the meticulous planning undertaken in the design phase, and close collaboration between Acacia and the building team.

Outcome

The resulting timber windows and doors elegantly frame both internal and external vistas, providing transparency between the various living zones and imbuing the home with natural light. The lush tropical garden of the interior courtyard surrounded by floor to ceiling timber sliding door units playfully balances the Brutalist forms of the home, while the contrasting materiality of the timber within the predominantly concrete and brick structure brings a sense of harmony.

“As a practice we value the knowledge and expertise of the sub-contractors we work with in order to deliver the best possible outcomes for our clients.

Acacia have proved to be an invaluable part of the design and development process, working with us on a number of projects to manufacture high quality timber windows which speak for themselves. We would not hesitate to recommend them to others.”

Nick Channon, Madeleine Blanchfield Architects, Architect

Freshwater

Project Details

Project Overview