An addition to an original weatherboard house in an inner city area of Sydney. The original house maintains it’s integrity as a larger worker’s cottage with narrow weatherboards and functional details. The new addition is a reinterpretation of the two storey cottage replacing the previous utilities ‘lean to’ with a new form which echoes the existing.
This new space incorporates a living area with a children’s loft above, study nook, kitchen and dining area. The living area and loft are connected by a void which forms the termination of the circulation spine extending from the exisiting corridor through to the new spaces.
The addition is clad in a wide vertical steel “weatherboard” more often used on commercial buildings but here viewed as an appropriate response to both historical and visual contexts. Design decisions were driven by references to existing fabric, orientation, axis of movement and, importantly, the intersection of new and old forms. The work gives back to the street with no barrier or intermediary form. The work unashamedly imposes itself on the public realm and is in some ways owned by it’s environment rather than by the individual.
This public aspect of the work is an idea that has developed thorough several of nobbs radford architects’ projects The addition explores ideas of architecture as object with reference to products the practice enjoys including the simple angular lines of the 1970s work of B&O master designer Jacob Jensen among others.
