Drummond Street Extension
Following on from a previous roof-top addition, this project explores the adjacencies and intimate scales of a garden, attenuated to an everchanging Melbourne climate.
Design Response
Seven years after the completion of a first-floor addition a precious rear garden, the protection of which drove the initial expansion upwards, now became the focus. By reconfiguring the ground floor kitchen and judiciously extending out a new, small living room, multiple connections are made to this garden and to a lightwell courtyard along the northern boundary.
Out from underneath the first floor, the new spaces are subdivided through changes in volume and unexpected directions of daylight. Sliding windows and doors combine the kitchen with the courtyard, from the sitting room a large pivot door opens onto a terrace for outdoor dining.
Hovering above the terrace is a roof that provides a weather filter for the interior and an infrastructure for outdoor occupation. Together, a retractable roof and sliding insect screen walls allow the owners to allow or restrict the penetration of sunlight into the interior, increase or remove protection to suit whatever mixture of rain, wind or warmth is on offer.
The Roofscape House – the name of the first-floor addition – provides elevated views of its surroundings forward, back and to the side. Its shape, colours and materials reference a landscape of brick chimneys and metal roofs: the upper layer of the inner suburb. Descending the stair these colours deepen and darken as the new spaces push into the site, opening and closing to the weather, offering gazes into the understorey.
The project features idiosyncrasies gained from knowing the clients well. The living space is nook-like, the kitchen party sized. Between these are smaller sitting and standing spaces that add to the variety of hangouts, for one or many, within this home.
Services Provided
- Full Services
Architect
Workshop Architecture
People
Project Director: Simon Whibley
Project Team: Ming Lee, Jacqueline Tang
Photographer: Tatjana PlittDate completed
February 2019
Location
Wurundjeri Country / Carlton North
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