The Gottlieb House, Wood Marsh, 1990-1994. Photo © Michael Wee
The Gottlieb House
The Gottlieb House, designed and built between 1990 and 1994, provides no clues to its domestic use from the street. Inside, custom designed furnishings, light, form and sheer monumentality create a sense of the theatrical.
Roger Wood and Randal Marsh established their private practice, Wood Marsh Architecture, in 1983. Their residential, civic and commercial work has received numerous awards. The Gottlieb House was their first big budget domestic design. More than twenty years later, the commissioning owner, Joe Gottlieb, is still enthusiastic about the design of the house.
Just as you cannot judge a book by its cover, you clearly cannot judge a house by its façade. Industrial, forbidding and intriguing to the street it may be, but inside there is beauty, joy, art, connection to nature, to light and the changing seasons. It is a robust family space that takes entertaining in its stride.
Karen McCartney, 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses: three decades of domestic architecture
Scroll through the photographs below to see details from the house designed by Roger Wood and Randal Marsh. Photographs by Michael Wee for the publication 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses: three decades of domestic architecture, by Karen McCartney.
Entrance to the Gottlieb House
"The entrance to the house is through a large scale steel door with the glass cube hovering overhead."
70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses by Karen McCartney.
The atrium of the Gottlieb House
"The atrium carries immense visual power because it remains totally unadorned; the architectural elements of raw, curved concrete, sweeping staircase and circular skylight creating the spare structure."
70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses by Karen McCartney.
Study space of the Gottlieb House
"The study space, with table and chairs designed by Wood Marsh, makes a connection with the garden through large floor-to-ceiling windows."
70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses by Karen McCartney.
Entertaining space of the Gottlieb House
"The huge entertaining space has a museum-like quality yet its relationship to the north-facing garden enlivens the space. Materiality is used to denote the structural elements of the house: the roughly rendered section in the ceiling, broken in three by slices of glazing, with each denoting one of the bedrooms above."
70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses by Karen McCartney.
The Gottlieb House, Wood Marsh, 1990-1994
"The Gottlieb House is an exercise in abstract forms and geometric shapes, its impassive concrete and glass facade giving nothing away to the street."
70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses by Karen McCartney.
Bathroom of the Gottlieb House
"Located in the glass box that spans inside and out, it [the main ensuite] has a rare combination of drama and taste. An expanse of leaf-cut marble forms the back wall, a circular skylight creates a moving light source and the elegant stainless steel wall cabinets nod to the industrial. The shower sits above a magnificent marble trough, which was designed to double as a bath (but was never used that way), and mirrored walls provide endless reflections. It is a bathroom that has endured both stylistically and functionally."
70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses by Karen McCartney.
