Vessels and Landscapes: a special reciprocity

“..We felt you were making something special and that it was the artist in you that was coming out. The end result far exceeded any sort of imaginings we had to be honest…. It was truly one of the most amazing experiences of our life.” (Dr Cath Dyer, 20014, studioKAP client). Architectural design at its heart can be a transformative, life-affirming process. A physical site can be a gift to an architectural project and the same project can return the favour to the site. This paper explores how the spatial orchestration in four recent individual house designs by studioKAP which have been inspired by site and place, reciprocate that gift with an enriched composition of internal and external landscapes. It examines how the architects’ inspiration is drawn from everyday spatial observations -gifts freely given and unconditionally received. It explores three specific questions. Can the individual and collective needs of family life be enriched through the architectural interpretation of a particular site and setting? Can the contemporary house be informed by the inherited wisdom and timeless qualities of the vernacular as well as remaining an individual site-specific authored statement? Can a dwelling’s interior realm intensify the experience and relationship to nature? The paper concludes that the answers cannot be revealed by the representation of and reflections on the designs alone. Rather it requires the buildings to be inhabited by human lives to reveal their significance, meaning and relevance, highlighting architecture’s key weakness as a medium for a research analysis of this type