In the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, CplusC Architectural Workshop has designed and constructed their new headquarters—and they've named it Delorean Victorian, a nod to Back to the Future and a hint at what the HQ holds. The team has reimagined a Victorian-era corner shop, restoring its facade to its former glory and adding a high-performance double-storey addition at its rear. The site is a fitting location for the studio, who specialise in both sustainable design and heritage conservation.
Site and context
When CplusC came across the site on Cleveland Street, it was empty but marred by what they describe as "decades of ugly additions and renovations, it was a rabbit warren inside." Built in the 1800s, the shop had been a newsagent through until the 1960s, before it housed a string of different restaurants until the late 1990s, and ended up gutted and empty by 2020.
Old meets new
The reimagination takes the original shopfront and adds a new two-storey extension behind it. Instead of integrating the old with the new, the two stand in contrast: the Victorian building—its parapets, shell mouldings and ornamental window frames along with its copper-clad Australian red cedar frames and gilded hand signage—restored. The new addition—black metal and hard lines—strikingly contemporary.
"Finding the old façade preserved under layers of newer materials was like striking gold. It also struck a chord in the community. From the daughter of the original newsagent to 1940s paperboys, people came forward to share a rich trove of memories."
— CplusC Architectural Workshop
Flexible floorplan
The floorplan is designed for flexible use: it can operate as a single headquarters or accommodate multiple tenancies. The program is arranged across two levels, with four independent zones: three office areas including shared kitchen, bathrooms, outdoor terrace and one storage area. At present, CplusC occupy the upper level and the ground floor is leased to a film and production agency.
Original building
The original features of the Victorian building have been honoured: original brick, timber beams, ceilings and floor structure have become features of the renovation and the shop frontage is once more a focal point of the street. Beneath the awning, traffic and roadwork signs form a geometric pattern that is at once historically relevant and strikingly new.
New building
The modern extension continues this playful materiality, but takes it to a new place. The extension is built upon a low-carbon concrete slab that provides thermal mass, and uses recycled bricks, double-glazed recycled hardwood sliding doors and windows and automated louvres that control cross ventilation and solar shading. The facade is completed with cascading plants that will provide further insulation to the building and help dampen the urban heat island effect.
Sustainability
The well-planted office uses regenerative power from a 6kW PV system with battery storage, and automated lighting and irrigation designed to reduce waste. Solar orientation and passive ventilation using louvres create a healthy open-air workplace with little need for carbon-intensive HVAC systems. Using recycled bricks and timber with existing building fabric significantly reduced the building’s carbon footprint.
