Words Ella Liascos
Photography Anthony Basheer

“A space to work and a space to ‘not work.’” This was the simple brief Lailani Burra and Hugh Marchant presented to MRTN Architects for their adjacent garden studios in suburban Melbourne. The two structures stand beside the couple’s renovated 1960s home, carefully oriented to appear spontaneously out of the garden, providing a haven for friends and family just a few steps from the main house.

The buildings that became known as Ember came from an idea Lailani and Hugh had been developing for years. Hugh needed a dedicated space where he could draw and write, and Lailani a multi-functional room for exercise, meditation and music. Other practicalities came to the fore during the pandemic, when the need for additional space felt particularly acute. “Lailani drove the project as a place for us to escape into,” Hugh says, “which we did.”

After asking MRTN Architects director, Antony Martin, to bring their vision to life, Hugh and Lailani were faced with the challenge of placing two new buildings near a suburban house on a triangular site full of big trees, without their appearing awkward, fragmented and conspicuous. Antony says that “for years, Hugh and Lailani had been very careful about what they’d been cultivating in the backyard, which they wanted to protect. They were also concerned with how the new buildings spoke to the existing house. ”

The landscape was completed by designer Sam Cox, who, in his signature way, planted indigenous local flora through the existing eucalypts and bamboos. “There’s an almost accidental-seeming nature to the placement of the studios and their relationship to the house and existing trees, which, of course, is 100 per cent intentional,” Antony continues. The result is that the two structures appear to interact with each other as well as the landscape, reflecting a conversation between their occupants. “The way the buildings were choreographed to face each other was important,” Antony highlights. “They’ve also got an open fire and an open kitchen between them, so you can kind of gather out there, as well as an outdoor bath.” As its name suggests, Ember is inspired by a campsite: “staring into the embers late at night”. Having been around for a barbecue himself, Antony can attest that the concept remains true in practice, the buildings becoming “tent-like forms around an open blaze”.

The forms and material choices for the project were informed by the couple’s travels in Japan. “We’d all read Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, so there were a lot of references to that kind of thinking,” says Antony, explaining how the charred-timber cladding, custom-made shoji screens and tatami matting in Lailani’s studio tie into the designs of celebrated Australian architect Robin Boyd, who was highly influenced by his experiences of Japan and its culture. Additional references from Hugh and Lailani included Taliesin student projects in Arizona and Villa Långbo by Olavi Koponen.

Although it was a special project throughout, Antony says that the most engaging part of it for him was the brief itself. The buildings “are two physical manifestations of each of Hugh and Lailani’s personalities. They’re not shared spaces. They are their own individual ones, designed very specifically for each of them.”

Lailani’s starting point was the idea of an empty room, “beautiful simply because of the play of light and shadows, reflections and materials,” she explains. “With small changes it transforms. Add a second chair or cushions, for instance, and it becomes a place to talk; with a Pilates chair or a yoga mat, it becomes an exercise studio; pull a futon from the cupboard and it becomes a place for friends and family to sleep in.” Hugh, meanwhile, required a dedicated work area – “no bed to be made, or dishes waiting to be done” – combining a digital illustration studio, library and workshop. His favourite element is the use of vertical space, which reduces the building’s footprint while maximising its utility – the idea for which sprang from the Wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonders, of the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe, those towering libraries of well-travelled collectors, filled with intriguing objects.

“From the outset, Hugh was interested in a small footprint but a very tall building,” Antony says, “whereas Lailani needed a larger footprint without so much height. I loved the idea of the different scales of these two structures, but instead of cladding them in different materials and heightening that difference, it was interesting to me to use the same exterior elements.”

For Hugh, the project has more than met its objectives. “The separation between the house and studio create a commute for me – a separation of home and work. They make sense of an area that was primarily neglected wilderness. Ember is more of an elaboration on the land than an extension of the house. It’s an expression of us being together. It makes our lives better and we can share it.”

For Lailani, Ember is a refuge, a place of solitude where she can be herself, whether dreaming, reading or listening to music. “We walk around the garden of an evening to the outdoor kitchen. The garden embraces us, a little woodsmoke in the air and the sound of possums in the trees, the fire sheltered and secluded,” she says. “On a daily basis we feel as if we are somewhere else – out in the bush, or lost on an island.”