Mansard House | Studio Bright
Not much suburban housing from Melbournes 70s has achieved streetscape heritage status as yet. Typically, houses such as these are demolished for the next big thing. While the original house is not a recognised piece of architecture, Mansard House is readily identifiable as a quintessential example from its time and deserving of retention for its timemarking contribution to a richly textured city that values its past.
Our clients intend aging at home and wish for the house to throw its arms out to extended family. Untangling the order of rooms and access to promote this desire required extensive internal remodelling.
Externally, wall alignments and their relationship to the mansard line are not changed. However, a new longer and finer horizontality transforms the proportioning system of the facade. The once heavy hat of the mansard gains elegance and a floating quality that redefines the way the mass sits in the landscape.
Aru House | Curious Practice
Weatherboard cottages built in the first half of the twentieth century were often generous at the front and restricted at the rear, with their relationship to prevailing breezes, appropriate orientation and gardens being a low priority. Aru House (Awabakal word for insect) plugs in a series of carefully balanced sensory amplifiers and connectors to just such a cottage in order for a long ignored sense of place to reemerge.
These sympathetic augmentations to the existing dwelling allow the building to become responsive to seasonal living patterns with a newfound sense of contextual sensitivity. All the new, and old, programs of the house overlap and borrow from each other, becoming more flexible and generous, enabling efficient planning and an ability to focus on quality over quantity. As a result, the value of the project is measured in joy and delight through the way materials are crafted, light is choreographed, and edges are blurred.
