Johanna Griggs

Long before her career as a swimming sensation or TV Sport and Lifestyle Host, Johanna Griggs, from Sydney’s Northern beaches, would take family holidays to the bush, a formative experience she now wants to provide for her two young boys.
In a posh boardroom on the 4th floor of Channel Seven’s Docklands studio, she plans their getaway. We’re heading to the hinterlands, an hour from Sydney, a location Johanna is so fixed on, she had already begun scoping out blocks prior to the meeting. Her brief to Archicentre architect Leon Moulton involves a cosy weekender as a tranquilizer for hectic, everyday city life.
Three words sum up her taste in architecture: edgy, modern and industrial. As host for Better Homes and Gardens, Johanna gets a first-hand look at Australians living lavishly. For this place, she would like to indulge, but do it sensibly. Sustainability is important, as is a veggie patch and a water tank that she can use to fill up her “ridiculously over-the-top bath” that she’s going to get Moulton to design for her. The architect paints a visual picture of the bath he has in mind in front of a full-length window with private valley views and flutes of champagne and chocolates and Johanna says she’s already there.

She has a big family, both in size and quantity. “We’re all huge!” she says.  “My husband Todd is six foot five, I’m six foot, the kids (Jesse James, 13, and Joe Buster, 12) are tall and lanky.” The plan needs high ceilings and extra room for the extended family as well. “We need to incorporate wine because I’m not going to kid around and say my family doesn’t drink a lot when we get together!” Leon suggests a wall of wine for the hosts and detached mirror-image houses for the guests — one for her two sisters and another for her brother and Mum. “My brother will be thrilled with that,” chuckles Johanna.

Of course no dream home would be complete without a memorable pool for the former swimmer, who won bronze in backstroke at the 1990 Commonwealth Games. She admits to fancying this lap-pool she saw on Better Homes with a black interior and one of those wet edges that seemingly fall into the horizon. Moulton says “by all means go the black edge, but about the black interior, it may look great, but if a child falls in, you can’t see them.” Johanna then makes a joke about being more concerned about spiders getting in there.

“There needs to be one area where the kids can entertain themselves,” she says. “Isn’t that lovely, what a nice person I am? Honestly there’s nothing worse than having kids be seen and not heard. I like noise and I like chaos but I also like when you can have a little bit of controlled chaos.”

Leon suggests an open-plan with a children’s play-zone and an adult’s play-zone, segmented by a sliding wall for good acoustic separation. “Say for example you’re trying to talk about some romance novel with your sister and the kids are in the middle of, I don’t know, Battlefield 3..Intergalactica? — it’s not really going to work!”
“It’s not going to gel!” she adds.
“Is there a bar?” Leon asks inquisitively.
“My husband would die if there wasn’t a bar.”
“We better give him one then!”
“That is his all-time house fantasy, I think. That and a big shed.”
“Talk to me about colours,” Leon asks. “Are they neutral tones or really bright?”
“I’m quite fearless with my colours. Tend to always go earthy bases and then use splashes of bright colour.”

They spend a few minutes talking about how the island bench has become the new entrance hall. Finally Johanna stresses the importance of the indoors blending with the outdoors and makes a point of stating her aversion to heavy drapes or anything that may put up a shield to the outdoors.

Next Moulton goes away and draws up his Archicentre Design Concept, imagining a location in the native bush on a hilltop falling gently to the North. “Upon arrival, guests will follow a tree-lined private road about one kilometre to a driveway circling an up-lit Ghost Gum,” he says.

Johanna had said “I don’t want the house to seem like a pimple on a pumpkin” and Moulton has responded dutifully. The front façade is a featureless garden wall inspired by French landscape architect Patrick Blanc that blends beautifully into the surroundings, revealing very little about the property. Up-lit weathered sleepers form a rustic colonnade, signifying the entry and leaving guests without a clue of what is awaiting them behind the iron bark door: a modern bush oasis in corrugated iron, steel and glass.

The view from the entry to the terraced swimming pool and valley vista beyond is worth a couple thousand words. For art lovers, the view from the pool into the house will be worth similar, as Moulton has chosen to showcase Johanna and Todd’s art collection on the south wall, which the architect reckons “will be a great way to help breathe life into the space”.

Moulton puts Johanna and Todd at one end and the kids at the other. Jesse and Joe’s zone, left of the entry, leads to a lounge and home theatre, plus bedroom and shared study and bathroom. Outside the boy’s bedroom is a veggie patch, so Mum can keep an eye on them when she pretends to be doing gardening. Joh and Todd can meet the kids halfway at the island bench, or at the dining table which can sit up to twenty people. Behind the simple galley kitchen is a large walk-in pantry and laundry and beyond is the main bedroom with en suite and open-plan bath with all the trimmings.

Out on the deck, the architect proposes a series of phantom flyscreens to create a screened-in porch effect like what’s used in the Deep South of the U.S. This would enable the Griggs’ clan to enjoy the sounds of the bush without getting any of the bites. What Moulton is aiming for here is a “casual and relaxed elegance,” possibly augmented by wire-type pergolas and deciduous vines. The retaining wall flanking the lap pool would be a vertical garden making bookends with the front façade.

“The main house is predominantly lit by north-facing sliding glass windows and is supplemented by the continuous skylight running east to west along the circulation corridor highlighting the timber panelling used for storage and art niche displays,” says Moulton.

“The form is loosely based on the work of Peter Corrigan, who made curved corrugated iron internationally famous in the 1970s and 1980s. Here we are giving it a 21st century eco-sensitive bush-blend”.

Off to the side of the property is Todd’s big shed, filled with boys’ toys like motorbikes and digging equipment, and also a ride-on mower for Johanna, who had earlier said, “It’s always been a fantasy of mine to own one”.

— Story by Shane Moritz