Join Architect James Stockwell for an intimate tour of his award winning Bunkeren House in Whitebridge. 

Winner of the Architecture Award for Residential Houses (New) in the 2021 RAIA NSW Architecture Awards and Shortlisted in the 2021 RAIA National Architecture Awards this is a truly special project.  

Whitebridge, near Newcastle was famous in the 1800’s for a 60 acre garden, ‘Bulls Gardens’. It was described at the time as a botanic wonderland of a large variety of plants, visited by national and international guests. The design team collectively set out on this project with the idea of arriving at a garden and the coastal view. The house bookends the garden as the headlands do the beach. A shared love of the war time coastal bunkers in Europe and Australia, and the climatic benet derived of integration with the landscape meant the house is half buried for climatic stability, bushfire protection and increased habitat and biodiversity. The house has hovering platforms of earth and planting, under which to shelter. The site is more landscape than house and the robustness of concrete endures the interaction with the surrounding geology and earth. The Danish client refers to the house as the ‘Bunkeren’.  

James Stockwell is Director of James Stockwell Architects, a registered architecture practice with a core of 4 people working in 4 states in Australia and also New Zealand. James has taught and lectured nationally and internationally and the works of the practice have been extensively published, filmed and exhibited. 
 
'Biophilic' is a more recent term used for an approach to architecture that works more closely with nature.
 
Enormous value is placed on the landscape, the context, and the natural systems, allowing them to shape the work directly. We treat the natural systems as entities and treat them as personalities we are getting to know. The buildings are having a good conversation. 
 
We think it is vital to look for uniqueness in local cultural qualities, history, practices, and local materials to generate local outcomes tuned to the climate and people. 
 
We aim to achieve a sense of incompleteness in the architecture  to be completed by the landscape, the occupants, and the interior belongings of living. Intentional omission and absence leave space for possibility within and around.