Archello Awards 2026 · Enter your projects before 30 September 2026
Archello Awards 2026 · Enter your projects before 30 September 2026

Sydneyarchitecture

An overview of projects, products and exclusive articles about sydneyarchitecture

Project • By Christopher Polly Architect • Private Houses

Trafalgar House

Sensitive alterations and a new rear addition to a freestanding house in a heritage conservation area are carefully composed to provide significant additional room for a growing family. The restored original front form retains local cultural heritage in the public domain and responsibly preserves its embodied energy, while gentle upgrades will revitalise its spaces and improve its energy efficiency and thermal comfort. Method Visualisation Method Visualisation The new addition purposely defers to established conditions of the front primary form in the manner in which it is sub-ordinate to and extends from it, with a distinctly contemporary material and colour palette serving to strengthen its legibility against the original front... More

Project • By Christopher Polly Architect • Private Houses

National House

National House is a new modestly sized two-storey skinny house for a young family of four. The design makes geometric and elemental references to the neighbouring development of its immediate context while also alluding to the formal qualities of various compact housing types in Japanese, Dutch and Belgian inner urban neighbourhoods. A second two-storey structure at the rear of the site provides a garage and a flexible artist’s studio on the upper level which outwardly reflects the predominant design language of the house.   The house accommodates ground floor wet area facilities with kitchen, dining and living areas directly connected to a rear landscaped garden, while a front room can be flexibly used as an office, guest bedr... More

Project • By Christopher Polly Architect • Private Houses

Greenwich House

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

Project • By Christopher Polly Architect • Private Houses

Starling House

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