liquid sky Mornington Peninsula is cottage country for Melburnians, and home to some of Australia’s most significant residential architecture. Abundant sunshine, fresh sea air and clean water has made the peninsula a popular summer residential and recreational destination for Victorians and the perfect stage for generations of Melbourne architects to explore new ideas. Pressures wrought by development threaten not only the attainability of the waterfront experience, but the very nature of that experience itself, potentially diminishing those particular attributes of serenity and convenience, proximity and seclusion that the waterfront offers. Rather than building another summer single-family residence, little wonder proposed to make the experience portable with a multi-layered textile sunshade/blind that acts as a camera obscura, as it both filters and collects the particularities of sea, air and light in its surfaces. As with the reflected light created by the gentle movement of the sea which shifts from the dazzle of glittering reflections to the subtlety of calm fog, the light captured by ‘liquid sky’ similarly shifts with changing wind and daylight. In bringing just this one aspect of the environment into the home, ‘liquid sky’ enlivens domestic life, injecting an exceptional experience into the everyday routine. *
top: Collage of the sunscreen/blind used outdoors on the balcony of the Paradiso by Paul Uhlmann Architects above: with the movement of the sun and the air, the quality of the light captured by the curtain changes - from hard focus to soft blur - in an animated light effect resembling that of sunlight dancing off the surface of the bay. left: ‘liquid sky’ is made of two layers, such that one layer can be operated independantly of the other. When the back layer is used alone, the room is animated by the the play of light and shadow in the room rather than the capturing of light on the textile surface.
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weather matters: On Site review 21
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