Home in Anstead, Queensland

Queensland architect Eddie Codd's fascination with steel cladding began during his earliest days in the profession and 45 years later shows no signs of diminishing. In fact he's just about to build a new home for himself in the hinterland that will utilise the design flexibility of the products which he enthusiastically admires.

It's not necessary to look far for examples of this commitment. The home his practice Codd Stenders recently designed for Eddie's daughter and son-in-law at Anstead on Brisbane's outskirts proves the point.

It sits lightly in a bush environment, with extensive use of LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® cladding for walls, roofs and ceilings defining its style, while LYSAGHT MINI ORB® provides an innovative gutter treatment.

"The lovely thing about the CUSTOM ORB® shape is that it is a soft profile," Eddie enthuses. "People don't think of steel as a soft material, but in fact it is actually soft and leaf-like in nature and it's comfortable in the Australian environment, particularly for domestic work.

"As for the MINI ORB® profile, it gives the architect an opportunity to use a product with a smaller scale than the traditional corrugation. There are numerous elements on a house which lend themselves to that treatment."

This continuing challenge to use materials in innovative ways has been with Eddie Codd from his days as a nine-year-old, leafing through a book titled "How It Is Made".

"I was devastated to learn then that houses in Britain were still being built in the same way they were in Roman times; they hadn't progressed at all," he recalled.

Eddie Codd's early fascination with how things are made not only steered him in the direction of architecture as a career, but also influenced a design approach which often leaves exposed the structural elements which others hide.

The house at leafy Anstead, 21 kilometres from Brisbane's CBD follows this theme throughout.

"In a house such as this, it's wasteful and unnecessary to line under the eaves," Eddie told Steel Profile magazine recently. "We get tied up trying to make things look pretty, hiding the bones in the process. The roof (of this house) is expressed for what it is and presents as a light membrane."

The ceilings over the living areas of the house are clad in perforated CUSTOM ORB® sheeting in ZINCALUME® steel - another Eddie Codd favourite.

"We've even got it in our own office over the boardroom with fluorescent lights around the edge so that the light filters through," he said.

"ZINCALUME® steel has a wonderful patina to it. It is much finer grained than galvanised steel. The spangle is fine, it is even grained. It's quite a lovely material.

"I think I was among the first in Australia to pick up on the potential of perforated sheeting," he said. "For the very first project I completed as a student I used it for a ceiling treatment.

"I had to convince a supplier to set up equipment for the one-off job, which in that case consisted of perforating the pans of a ribbed profile."