Ha Ha Haus
Alphington, Melbourne
Ha Ha Haus is a new single-storey house of 245 square metres in Alphington, finished in 2022, whose name plays on the ha-ha, the sunken barrier of a country estate: here the front fence and front garden came out and a planted mound took their place. In architect Adi Atic's words, "We are proposing an inverted Ha-Ha in an inverted context (suburbia) with a limited amount of private land, grounded in the tradition of Ha-Ha." The mound also hides a 20,000 litre rainwater tank that feeds the garden and the bathrooms.
The plan is a ring around a central courtyard, which is what the window looks into; the architects call it "a donut surrounding and enveloping a central landscaped courtyard". The house is built from three finishes chosen locally to keep embodied carbon down, brick, charred Blackbutt cladding outside and natural timber, and the brick is worked hard: "The brick grounds the building and is pushed to various limits in its application as walls, paving, planter boxes and seating."
FIGR Architecture
FIGR Architecture is a Melbourne practice founded by Adi Atic and Michael Artemenko, working from a studio in Cremorne; on this house the team was Adi Atic, Michael Artemenko and Barbie Vongphone.
Architecture and interiors FIGR Architecture (@figr_architecture). Photography @blachford. Builder @bydeconstructions. Landscape @mudoffice. Styling @ruthwelsby. Seen via @co_architecture_au.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.