Cottage

- Our clients came to us with a typical Fremantle weatherboard cottage from the 1920, they wanted to remove the 1950s lean to structure and add a substantial renovation - In early design conversations with our clients they noted a difference in their personalities, one an introvert the other an extrovert. To Marty, home was a backdrop for entertaining and about being around friends and family. Whilst for Soo home was a sanctuary where she could find space and time for solitude and an escape from the corporate Monday to Friday environment. It also needed to fulfil their needs as a young family. - Commonality was found in a desire for a well integrated, fluid, casual, light and airy home. Where they could find what they called ‘engage... More

Responsive to both site conditions and programmatic needs, the cottage was an exercise in finding an alternative to the “bigger is better” trend that is currently dominating cottage design. The resulting form – a series of low-slung volumes deeply embedded into the landscape – provides all the needs and comforts of all-season, 21st century living while honouring and respecting Muskoka’s cultural and natural landscape. Cindy Blazevic,Scott Norsworthy Since the early 1860s Ontario’s Muskoka region has been an important summer tourism destination for thousands of city-dwelling Ontarians, resulting in a rich accumulation of over 100 years of recreational architecture among the region’s 16,000 lake... More

This project is envisioned as a full-time residence, guest house, and fully functional barn. The essence of the architecture takes cues from the rural agricultural aesthetic on one end of the spectrum and contemporary living on the other end. The conceptual goal of the project is to use the structures to illustrate the evolution of how we use materials, harness natural light, and, most importantly, create and design useful spaces, all while portraying the evolution and modernization of architectural design.The heart of the arrival sequence is the ‘Gateway to the Meadow’. The meadow is framed by a breezeway calling out entry into the Main House and Barn while simultaneously allowing passage through to an outdoor gathering space o... More

The area of Port Melbourne the site sits upon is a revitalised area rich in a diversity of contemporary architecture and restored workers cottages. House 184 reimagines the quintessential Victorian suburban home bridging the gap between its historical contexts with that of contemporary living. The house sits upon a tiny parcel of land and the client was keen to maximise the internal living areas without compromising the external space. While the façade and its archetypal Victorian details were retained, a modern reinterpretation was built at the rear, housing the open-plan living areas that work to maximise the internal space. Louvered screens and full height bi-fold doors create a seamless connection between inside and out, extendi... More

Galv Mountain house is the renovation and extension of a tiny Richmond cottage on a narrow street, deep in the densest heart of Richmond. The quaint Victorian cottage had been standing for over 150 years with a colourful past housing everyone from workers in the neighbourhood factories and notorious members of Melbourne’s underbelly to the inner city loving residents of today. The diminutive nature of the house, the lot and the street all conspired to make the house feel too cramped and its resident needed just a bit of extra room. Its future enjoyment was further threatened by neighbouring development that would take away what modest aspect and light it received. The only way was up. Our mission was, as the builder put it, to &ldqu... More

This former coach-house located in Bendigo, Victoria offered Bijl Architecture the opportunity to explore heritage and adaptive design from a new perspective. Carved off from the adjacent original gold-rush era mansion many decades ago, the Victorian-era building had been converted to a dwelling in the 1970s, and now sat on an unusual square allotment that created an uneasy relationship with the street. With the adapted dwelling purchased in a dark and decrepit state, our client – a busy music educator and conductor – briefed us to create a family home for contemporary living that would accommodate a grand piano in a salon-style environment for the teaching and enjoyment of music.   The house needed to exude delight, char... More

Aerial Direct are a leading independent telecoms provider and the largest Direct Business Partner of O2 in the UK with over 115,000 customers. Aerial Direct chose to partner with Spectrum Workplace on a complete design and build exercise for their new Headquarters in Fareham, Hampshire.   THE PROJECTAerial Direct are a leading independent telecoms provider and the largest Direct Business Partner of O2 in the UK with over 115,000 customers. Following rapid expansion Aerial Direct had outgrown their premises in Gosport, Hampshire and needed to move to facilitate their business growth plans and to demonstrate their status as an industry leader. Aerial Direct secured a 26,000 square foot office space in Fareham, Hampshire. The site was... More

Design Engine and Paul Cashin Architects complete new private residence in Hampshire countryside Won at planning appeal, this 2000 sqft home is a replacement for the existing Herdsman’s Cottage which was part of the original Woodcote Farm complex in Upham, Hampshire.   The house is designed to be split-level open plan, yet can be conceived of as a series of distinct zones arranged about the main circulation axis. These zones increase in intimacy and privacy as one moves through the home, culminating in the private master suite on first floor level.   The property includes four large bedrooms, each with ensuite, and countryside views from spacious open-plan living, dining and kitchen areas which feature wide expanses of... More

The project involved the demolition of a small 1920’s bungalow with a new contemporary three-bedroom house. The site backs on to Flatropers Wood Nature reserve and is surrounded by woodland to the east but with views across open countryside to the west. The main consideration of the design was to make best use of the site, which is a long narrow triangular wedge.   The existing cottage was very dark and felt very enclosed because of the high, dense boundary hedging. A key move in the proposals was to remove the hedging and in doing so, open up uninterrupted views across the adjoining countryside and wood. This also vastly improves on the natural light getting into the site. The new house has been designed to read as a cluster... More

Charming cottage style in the front. Cool modern multi-level design in the back. Boutique firm, John Lum Architecture, renovated this 4500-sf family house, located in San Francisco, to maximize views while preserving the architectural integrity of the neighborhood. An engineering masterpiece, the house was rebuilt from the foundation up to encompass 5 bedrooms and 5 baths. To keep with the area’s vernacular, the front facade features an A-frame pitched roof, appropriate of the neighboring houses that line this tree-lined street. A modern silhouette and exposed steel beams frame backyard views. Tiered levels balance the indoors with the out with multiple terraces complementing the California indoor outdoor lifestyle. Peppered with gene... More

The Heights Building opens as a cascade of green terraces fanning from a central axis, addressing the academic needs of Arlington’s two county-wide school programs while forming a vertical community within its dense urban context. Located along Arlington’s Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, The Heights merges two existing secondary schools – the H-B Woodlawn Program and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Program – into a new 180,000sf building to accommodate an expected enrollment of up to 775 students. Working closely with Arlington Public Schools (APS), WRAP (West Rosslyn Area Plan) and the Arlington community, the design supports both H-B Woodlawn’s visual and performing arts-focused curricula and Shriver’s extens... More

The concept for the house is a matchbox in which the four inner quadrants (cedar siding) slip past one another within the outer sleeve (standing seam metal wrapper).  By doing so, each end of the inner quadrants either juts out past the outer sleeve, or is pushed into it, thereby creating outdoor space that is still within the confines of the sleeve. The house is meant to read as an urban cottage nestled in the woods and therefore in its approaching (short) elevation it has the geometry of an iconic 4 sided house. To articulate this even more, it is raised on an inset concrete plinth, which expresses the bottom two edges (and therefore fifth side) that would normally touch the ground. More

On what is considered a typical summer cottage site in Höllviken, a seaside resort south of Malmö, the client, a young couple, chose to build a year-round house that was unapologetically modern while at the same time accommodating a flexible family lifestyle.   The most economically feasible solution was in this case what is known as a ”1.5- storey house” – possibly the most common type of house in southern Sweden. This would have the additional benefit of allowing for the preservation of a number of the site’s trees, as well as much of its natural vegetation.   In terms of design, this type of housing constitutes a challenge. A traditional pitched roof needs to be combined with a more austere... More

Located on a private condominium called “Bougainvillea“ in San Eulalia, Huarochirí - Peru,this 440m2 two storey cottage sits on a 1095m2 site with an open terrace, a swimming pool and a 4x5m pergola.   The Client had very specific requirements with regards to the design of the house. Our role was to assit the Client on achieving their long awaited holiday house and to explore different spatial and architectural conditions withing the given parameters by the Client and the local design guidelines.   Part of the local requirements was to work with pitched roofs. This gave us an opportunity to work with different heights and to explore alternative timber structure designs which enhanced the architectural interi... More