36 Teneriffe Drive, Teneriffe

Teneriffe Hill was occupied by Europeans from the 1860s when landholder James Gibbon constructed ‘Teneriffe House’ atop the hill’s peak. Gibbon’s 102 acre (41ha) property was subdivided and sold in 1882 for closer residential development. Winding up Teneriffe Hill the former private driveway to Teneriffe House was remade as a public road and named Teneriffe Drive. Land purchasers took up residence from the 1880s. By the mid-twentieth century Teneriffe was closely developed and featured a finely interspersed mix of elite and humble housing.

The relatively small 24 perch (625m2) site at 36 Teneriffe Drive remained unoccupied until the 1970s. Its topography was described on a 1912 survey as a ‘very steep vacant gully’, making it difficult for residential development. However, in the 1970s Brisbane’s population was burgeoning and previously unattractive building sites in the inner city were being reconsidered for development.

The challenges of the site made it attractive for the application of an emerging architectural movement, Critical Regionalism. This is a broad term for a collection of styles that influenced architects from the 1960s into the twenty-first century. Some architects were critical of the uniformity and impersonality of the dominant International style and developed architectural styles that expressed ‘regional’ influences. New schools of theory and design emerged in response, including the ‘Sydney School’, an informal collective of Sydney based architects who were greatly influenced by the qualities of the building site, preferring sloping, rocky, well-treed sites with distant views of natural features. Mostly employed in domestic architecture, the style is characterised by a house with split levels that steps down the slope, producing interior spaces of rich spatial complexity and connectedness. Personality and warmth was imparted by using ‘natural’ materials with inherent textures and colours that were tactile.

In 1975 Brisbane architect Neville Rodney Chambers designed his family house at 36 Teneriffe Drive, although the Chambers’ ownership of the site was not registered until 1976, when site works commenced. Construction was completed in 1979. The design included a limited palette of inexpensive, readily available materials used in an ‘honest’ way. It was sited and its form manipulated for optimum orientation to natural light and ventilation of the interior as well as distant views to the surrounding landscape. It included a well-measured sequence of rooms that were casually interconnected across split-levels and had a strong and direct relationship with a surrounding garden. Aesthetically, the house is notable for its mellow, sensitive architectural qualities. The comprehensive and well-executed style of the house is distinguished by simple geometric forms juxtaposed against a steep, lush sub-tropical garden. The house features a pervasive use of concrete blockwork walls and slate-clad floors, repetitive timber structural elements, and expansive windows.

The Chambers took up residence shortly after construction was completed and continue to live there in 2016. The house remains a private residence and is highly intact.

1. Apperly et al. A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture: Styles and Terms from 1788 to the Present. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1989

2. Brisbane City Council Archives, Surveyor’s Notebook, 1912 (updated 1927)

3. Musgrave, Elizabeth, Kaylee Wilson and Brisbane City Council Heritage Unit. New Farm and Teneriffe Hill: Heritage and Character Study. October 1995

4. Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Queensland Certificates of Title

5. Digital Archive of Queensland Architecture (website, http://qldarch.net/beta/#/)

6. Kenneth Frampton, ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’

7. ‘A History of Architecture: Critical Regionalism’