Australianarchitecture

  A new off-grid house makes geometric allusions to the clients’ love of the abstract formal qualities of modernist houses by Myron Goldfinger and Charles Gwathmey. Based on a 4m x 3.8m structural grid, the design pin-wheels a series of private and public rooms around a central courtyard to provide a modest internal floor area of 100 sqm with a low environmental footprint of only 129 sqm on the site. Pop-up roof projections at each corner amplify the pin-wheel to offer expanded volumes and varying connections to tree canopies and sky views. Matthew Fonda Aside from requisite living, dining, kitchen, and bathroom spaces, it accommodates a dedicated office, a covered entry terrace for outdoor dining, 2 bedrooms with ensuite... More

A new two-storey split-level house on a waterfront site cascades a series of private and public rooms in response to its steeply sloping site, landscape setting, and harbour views. It provides crafted inter-penetrations of space and light across its multiple half-levels, and offers a multi-generational model in its spatial organisation to enable room for a growing family of four with permanent accommodation for the owners’ parents.   Its formal geometry is expressed as two distinct volumes separated by an open courtyard along the northern edge, and bridged by a glazed stair circulation zone for access to light, ventilation, and divergent interior views at the centre of the house – thereby reading as a singular volume alon... More

The proposal for a young family entails a new two-storey house on an inner-suburban site. Its formal composition to the street and rear is a uniquely crafted and direct response to setback and building height plane controls. It offers a model for densification of a compact site to enable room for not only a growing family, yet a multi-generational proposition for increasingly extended stays of the owners parents. A thin front facade is extruded in section to the centre of the plan and pinched-in at this point to provide a covered second entry, expanding to a greater width at the rear for an asymmetric gable-end form inventively accommodating the client’s brief over both levels. The front half provides for a side driveway and off-stre... More

RamenYa is a chain of Japanese ramen noodle shops in Melbourne and the chain unveiled its flagship restaurant in Emporium Melbourne. A unique aspect of this project was the inclusion of a second restaurant, 1000wat, in a shared context where both brands operate under one roof. This space doubles as an incubator for 1000wat, announcing its maiden foray onto the local food scene.The brief called for a design which was robust to cater to both restaurants by relaying a clear separation of the restaurants’ brand, and unify these elements under a single architectural gesture. It was important that the 2 restaurants retained features that defined their individual identities without condensing them into a ‘mini food-court’.The main design gest... More

Nestled in a diverse neighbourhood pocket in Albert Park, the original building was a dilapidated double-fronted Victorian house book-ended by a double-storey terrace house on its south side. The house is located on a corner allotment that is pinched in by the main street and a laneway which gives it its irregular, triangular "pizza" shape that tapers towards the rear. As a heritage listed building, it was imperative to rescue the front of house which was in a severe state of disrepair. The homeowner and his family of 4 presented us a brief that started off with the basic functional premise of maintaining a 3-bedroom house at the very minimum, and making use of the neighbour's double-height boundary wall to introduce a second storey vo... More

A substantial lower ground room is inserted under the original fabric, harnessing the fall in the site towards the rear. It extends deeply beneath the existing dwelling and outwards towards the garden to transform the original dwelling in combination with the re-crafted rear of the ground floor above. Brett Boardman Photography Brett Boardman Photography Brett Boardman Photography Both levels accept a modestly-sized lightweight addition which extrapolates existing wall alignments, gutter levels and enclosing wall heights - that at once, extends and subverts existing geometries to present an interpreted mirrored slice of the original vernacular form and palette attached to the retained rear fabric. An eccentric roof form extr... More

Haines House is located in the inner city Sydney suburb of Newtown. The project provides a model for grafting a singular substantial volume to an existing single storey semi-detached dwelling while capturing a centrally retained bathroom within the new volume, enabling old and new fabric to enmesh a unique spatial sequence along the length of the dwelling counter intuitive to popular planning methods - to improve the physical and visual relationships to the new rear garden, while harnessing improved access to sunlight, natural ventilation and views to borrowed landscapes and sky beyond. The generation of the design entailed two formal strategies: 1. A clear response to place in three acts involved extrapolating the line of the rear... More

An articulated two-storey framed volume is sensitively stitched to the rear original fabric, while retaining its front Federation masonry and hipped envelope as part of its environmental, economic and planning values. It has a sectional split-level relationship to the original house that harnesses the fall of the site to the rear, enabling the cellular front plan to vertically and horizontally unfurl into a series of connected interior spaces that expand to its setting. Brett Boardman Photography Brett Boardman Photography The built form and its program resolution respond to its immediate setting and the established conditions of the original dwelling. The two-storey volume mediates the scale and massing of its larger and smaller... More

The project simply and directly extrapolates existing formal qualities in plan and section, with extension of key existing materials and finishes to retain some memory of its previous incarnation - while providing a significantly expanded series of connected interior volumes that harness access to sunlight, ventilation and views of tree canopies, sky and district beyond. The design strategy entails: 1. The insertion of a ground floor open plan kitchen, dining and living volume generated by extension of the existing envelope and ceiling and floor levels to an averaged plan footprint of a former lean-to, followed by a rear first floor addition that extrudes the previous floor plate and gable-ended pitched roof form over the new ground... More