2023 Gallery
Winner: New House under 200 square metres
Blok Modular with Vokes and Peters for Blok Stafford Heights
Blok Stafford Heights is a simple, low-cost house on a sloping suburban site. It is a modular building, delivered and assembled as separate pre-fabricated components. These modules were paired with site-built landscape structures, such as the blockwork garden walls and retaining elements that unify the house and ground plane.
Jury Citation
In the face of massive cost escalation and uncertainty in the construction industry, Blok Stafford Heights provides a compelling example of how clever and restrained design can produce a low-cost family home that sits at ease in its suburban setting.
Blok Modular and Vokes and Peters have collaborated to deploy a modest series of site-built blockwork elements, which anchor a prefabricated house – installed in one day – to a sloping site in the Brisbane suburbs. They have created a home with two distinct settings for family life to unfold: a generous courtyard garden and an elevated platform overlooking a panoramic city.
Every element in this project has a purpose. Adornment and fanciful detailing are eschewed in favour of clear spatial connections and economy of means. The project gives much of the site to landscape – one can imagine that, in a few years’ time, once the shade trees have grown and the gardens have flourished, this house will feel as if it has always been here.
Blok Stafford Heights is a refined and beautiful home that does a lot with a little. Unpretentious, dignified and generous to its suburb, there is a lot to learn from this deserving winner.
