Asked to create a pair of development homes in the Brisbane suburb of Tarragindi in Queensland, Australia, architect John Ellway was faced with the unknown. “The houses were designed to be sold shortly after they were completed,” he recalls. “So, the challenge was to design a house not for a specific owner, but one that works for many people and could be adapted over time.”

The client works as a surveyor and wanted to try his hand at doing a subdivision, as many of his own clients had done. As the project progressed, the client’s whole family—his wife and two teenage daughters—became increasingly invested in the design. “The lovely outcome is that they decided to live in one of the homes and rent the other one out,” says Ellway. “I feel that’s the biggest success of the project.”

The homes are sited on a fairly busy neighborhood road, and this needed to be addressed in the design. The vine-covered front facade was partially informed by this constraint, mediating the noise and dust from the road below while also providing privacy for adjacent rooms. The use of a fast-growing passionfruit vine meant the entire mesh facade was covered in just six months.

The home is also situated on a sloped site, with steel stilts raising the living area above the road level to create an undercroft surrounded by lush planting. Stairs lead from this area to a courtyard that separates the bedrooms from the communal living spaces.

Interestingly, there is no fence dividing or surrounding the two homes, connecting them not only with each other but with the wider neighborhood. “In a lot of suburban housing, people drive into a garage, shut the automatic door, and never step outside their sealed box,” says Ellway. “Not in these houses. The entry path is elongated from the footpath to almost halfway up the block, entering a courtyard in the center of the house. It makes a smaller parcel of land feel bigger, but also gives opportunity for casual interactions with the neighbor and provides passive surveillance over each other’s property.”

Key to the wide appeal of the homes was the idea that they could be easily adapted over time to suit a variety of different owners. The undercroft of the homes, for example, is designed so it can be infilled if a future owner needs more space for another bedroom, playroom, or home office.

“We tried to build a minimum-sized house with the minimal number of rooms that the property market would be comfortable with,” explains Ellway. “This kind of adaptability means less building material is used now and in the future.”

In keeping with this low-waste approach, the more public spaces in the homes—living, dining, and courtyard—were prioritized in terms of size and detailing, while the bedrooms have a much smaller footprint. This encourages family members to spend time together in the common spaces, which include a shared workspace overlooking the entry courtyard.

Another key concept underpinning the project was that the design could potentially be rolled out to other sites. The steel posts that support the home could be adapted for different topographies; the house can be flipped depending on sun and breezes; and rooms can be swapped or separated by additional landscaped courtyards. “I think it’s important to have loftier goals for the work you do,” says Ellway.

Given that the home was intended to be a development opportunity, budget was the primary challenge. “Speculative housing being sold after construction needs to come in at a price that the market will accept, unlike a bespoke 'forever home' where an owner may be happy to overcapitalize for a few years,” says Ellway.

As a result, a number of construction and material decisions—including building both homes concurrently to reduce deliveries, reducing labor through prefabricated framing, and limiting concrete to one pour—were made at the outset. Simple, cost-effective materials, such as fiber cement, plasterboard, and aluminum framed windows that recede into the background were also used to place the focus on the gardens and courtyard.

Shop the Look

In the end, the two lushly landscaped homes came in at around $2,250 AUD per square meter ($153 USD per square foot) compared to the expected cost of $4,000-$5,000 per square meter for a more conventional architect-designed home. “Dealing with the budget and making that work was the most interesting part of the process, as I love to design with constraints,” reveals Ellsay. “The outcome of the owners wanting to live there and not sell the houses was extra satisfying.”

Related Reading:

A Queenslander Cottage in Brisbane Is Overhauled to Open to the Elements

A Crumbling Cottage Gives Way to a Brisbane Home Brimming With Greenery

A Dated Cottage In a Brisbane Suburb Gets a New Look and a Spacious Addition

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: John Ellway / @jellway

Builder: Nall Builders

Structural Engineer: Westera Partners

Landscape Design: Studio Terrain

Cabinetry: Top Shelf Cabinetmaking

Photography: Toby Scott