Andrew Maynard Architects, a studio based out of Melbourne, Australia, have completed a playful structure, Hill House. Hill House makes the most of a thin home plot, common to the North Melbourne suburbs.

Where users entered the home, passing by private areas to get to the living space, Andrew Maynard Architects reoriented the entrance into the kitchen so these areas remained private. The existing home was left untouched but the backyard used to extend the home like a hilled backyard and sunken dining room.

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“Andrew is from Tasmania, a place dominated by its landscape. Built form is secondary and subservient to landscape. Melbourne is predominantly flat. Could this be why Melbourne’s architecture is adventurous? There is no landscape to confine therefore building is free to become landscape. Hill House is a response to this possibility. Melbourne is flat. If one is to explore the possibility of cantilevering off a cliff (a desire of many architects) one is forced to manufacture that landscape. A monolithic form is unsheathed from the hill and placed atop. A celebration of the synthetic, the manufactured. A simulacrum of both an undulating landscape and the pure architectural form,” Andrew Maynard Architects added.