Offbeat Homes

Current Mood: Enthralled With Drew Heath

by Jennifer Chait on November 24th, 2007

Before launching into this post I did want to point out one reader’s home in Amsterdam. It’s a very cool boat home with a green roof (as in eco-green — not color green; well, it is green in color too but well, you get the point). Home dweller Andi posted this in an older post but I thought some of you who aren’t combing the archives might enjoy it. Take a look.

Back to my original post; yup enthralled I am. Drew Heath is a swinging architect from Australia but I can’t find much information on him. His website is minimal and his description fun stating, “Drew Heath is an architect who builds things!” (don’t know if he planted this but I like it). I did find some more info at Ace Day Jobs that says he started with a box of Legos and just moved on up in the world of building.

At Ace Day Jobs you can watch a really wonderful video of Heath discussing his career. Besides having very cool things to say he’s modest but driven noting that he’s won some small awards but that his contest motto is not to enter contests until he’ll win. Plus he’s not bad on the eyes — you know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Of course the absolute best thing about Heath are his designs. Brilliant and many of them clean, simple, but with offbeat lines; a magic combination.

I may have first noticed Heath in an article reviewing his Zig Zag Cabin — being me this was an article I proceeded to lose. I found it again recently and I’m almost 95% sure it’s the same article.

Anyhow, with or without those boring facts about my losing things the Zig Zag Cabin is great. Take a look…

Noted in the Zig Zag article I mentioned is another reason to like Heath;

“Architect and builder Drew Heath’s Zigzag House abandons the desire for permanence in architecture and examines minimum living requirements and our relationship with place. Heath speaks of human consumption with open disdain, “We are disgusting as human beings the way we live – we really have lost control… there’d be more space in the world for us to go walking if we reduced our consumption of everything.””

Ah yes, reducing the footprints of our lives as a whole. This is one big plan we love here at Offbeat because design is an easy place to create eco-change and it sounds like Heath agrees. You can see more photos here.

Other enthralling Heath work includes:

Blackheath Library

The Cypress House

And last up his sweet boat; the Arkiboat.

So much to adore. You can see more of the Arkiboat and other projects at Heath’s website — I’d hit the cigar house if I were you. He’s a young guy so far as architects go so I assume we’ll be seeing many more amazing designs in years to come.

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POSTED IN: Architects, Floating Homes, Homes in the Woods, Houses That Move, Modern, Nature Inspired, Nicely Shaped Homes, Simplicity