Ian and Nicola Minchin were discussing the exterior finishes with their architect Robert
Simeoni. The Melbourne-based architect uses zinc for many of his houses. While zinc was something the Minchin’s were open to, they werenít quite convinced it was what they were after for their new home in South Yarra. The decision could have gone a number of ways, had it not been for a series of images of a new brick that was about to arrive in Australia.
Peter Robertson, who has a long history with bricks and is now the Australian distributor for Petersen Brick from Denmark, showed the couple images of the Kolumba K55. Robertson, director of Robertson’s Building Products, has been at the forefront of the brick industry for decades. The slim, charcoal grey, handmade brick, made the Minchin’s, as well as Simeoni, rethink their scheme. “It wasn’t that we were adverse to using bricks. Robert showed us a number of the houses to which he had delivered various bricks. But it was either the colour or their texture that didn’t capture our imaginations,” says Nicola.
While the images of the Kolumba K55 were enticing, the Minchin’s were completely ‘sold’ when the samples were handed to them. “Each handmade brick is slightly different, with each one displaying a set of thumbprints. None of them are perfectly straight. But that gives them that sense of artistry,” says Ian.
For Simeoni as well, the decision to change to brick was immediate after seeing the samples: As each length of brick varies, the job required highly skilled bricklayers. “It made the process a little more complex, but the result has been worth it. Kolumba has added texture to the house and this brick also suited the more abstract nature of the architectural composition.” says Simeoni, whose brief was a striking contemporary home using a simple palette of materials, with clean and minimal lines.
Unlike the charcoal grey facade, the interior of the two-storey home is entirely white. “White was never in discussion. It was always going to be white,” says Nicola, who, with Ian, was keen to create a pristine white ‘canvas’ to display their fine contemporary paintings. White also appears in the white four metre-long white Corian bench which is used for most meals, from breakfast through to dinner.
The home’s rear elevation features generous glazing, with large glass sliding doors leading to the garden and terrace. A composition of bricks from the past on the boundary of the property also provides a fascinating dialogue between bricks from the past and present. The rear boundary, for example, features what was previously a wall and fireplace, once part of a Victorian home from the late 1800s. And on another boundary is a brick wall, which once formed part of a stable. Although these bricks and the Kolumba bricks are decades apart, there’s a sense of the handcrafted, with slight irregularities in each, beautifully adding to the rich patina of the Minchin’s home and the neighbourhood.
