Architect-built concrete bubble house in Australia is for sale

2020-08-26T16:10:00-04:00

Many architects dream of one day building their thesis projects in real life to test out the heady design ideas that coalesce at the tail end of an architectural education.

After graduating from Queensland Institute of Technology's Department of Architecture and Industrial Design in the late 1970s, Australian architect Graham Birchall of Birchall and Partners architects spent a decade doing just that by working to implement concepts from his thesis to create a distinctive, one-of-a-kind Bubble House.

Birchall's senior thesis sought to explore the material properties of Ferrocement, a technique that uses thin shell concrete and wire mesh to create complex spaces and enclosures. Following graduation, Birchall worked to build his Bubble House using his own money, time, and labor ultimately rendering a complex home that to this day evokes a futuristic way of life that draws on these elemental and imaginative material properties. The home, built between 1983 and 1993, was constructed w...

Cutting out the (real estate) middle man: a closer look at Self-Builds

2016-07-15T13:46:00-04:00

It’s not a new argument to say that cities are increasingly morphing from social configurations to investment vehicles. [...] “Self-builds”, “Baugruppen”, and “zelfbouw” are just a few ways to define variations of building-it-yourself (BIY), whether done individually or as a collective. The end users (who are the commissioners), together with architects, decide on the design of their homes, and then take care of the construction themselves or have contractors do it.

Archinect - News

Architect-built concrete bubble house in Australia is for sale

Cutting out the (real estate) middle man: a closer look at Self-Builds