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Architects: Rama Architects
- Area: 270 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Simon Whitbread
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Lead Architects: Thomas Martin, Daniel Raymond
Text description provided by the architects. The project is an Alterations and Additions to an existing Art Deco Heritage House on Sydney's Northern Beaches for a young and growing family. This 5-bed home looked to celebrate the honest red brick vernacular from an external point of view and modernize and open the inside through void spaces, large windows, and expressed structure to allow an open and flowing living, connecting to the rear. The goal was to create a sense of harmony with the existing, yet a distinction of the new from the old. This was achieved through embracing the brick facades in their material and scale yet differentiating through color and form.
Due to the Heritage retention requirements imposed by the local authorities, we were challenged by having to uphold the existing skin of the building, mainly the front façade, whilst trying to open the building and remove the structure from the inside. The builders were able to implement smart construction methods allowing the propping up of the external structures and constructing new internal slabs and steel-framed structures.
The spatial configuration of the home is that of a traditional layout – living spaces on the ground floor and the sleeping and private spaces on the first floor. With the entry door on the side of the home, you enter a hallway with kids living on one side and mudroom storage on the other.
Behind the hallway and through to the main body of the house is the open living with kitchen and dining spilling onto the rear lawn. The expression of volume and scale is emphasized through the large void space over the dining dramatizing the shadows of the arched windows on the white brick wall. Upstairs is similar in its layout with the bedrooms and family bathroom off the hallway leading off the stair. Outside is the existing one-car garage which is transformed into a small studio, and the pool
