Local conditions
The lots got smaller and the windows did not move
Four Metres To The Next Window
Twenty years of infill has changed what a south-east Queensland window looks
at. Duplexes, townhouses and small-lot houses put a habitable-room window a few
metres off a boundary, and the house next door does the same thing back. In
Robina, Southport, Bulimba and Paddington we regularly measure a bedroom or a
study whose window faces another window at the same height, close enough to read
the title on a book. The owner did not want a dark room. They wanted the room to
stop being a fishbowl at eleven in the morning, which is a different brief and
takes a different fabric.
Brisbane adds a wrinkle the Coast does not have. A traditional Queenslander is
raised on stumps, so its living level sits roughly at the eye line of anyone on
the footpath — the front rooms of half of Paddington and New Farm are
looked into from the street by people who are not even trying. A verandah helps
with the sun and does nothing about that. The blind has to.
Then there is the part everyone forgets: the whole thing reverses at sunset.
Every fabric on this page filters light in the direction light is travelling, and
after dark that direction is out of your living room and into the street. Which
is why we quote the night solution at the same time as the day one, rather than
waiting for the phone call in week three.
