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Project Details:

Location: Surry Hills, Australia

Architect: SJB Architects / @aboutsjb

Footprint: 745 square feet

Builder: Promena Projects

Engineer: Van der Meer Consultants

Landscape Design: Dangar Barin Smith

Photographer: Anson Smart / @smartanson

From the Architect: “19 Waterloo Street is buried amongst the chaos of warehouses and terraces that once served Sydney’s rag trade. A corner terrace with decades of architectural detritus had engulfed the site with a never-ending cascade of additions and lean-to’s with the odd weed surviving between the cracks of the concrete path. As a butchers, a grocer, a window workshop, a hatter and finally a restaurant, each with the attached rooms above, the original building had had a checkered past.

“Our intent was to deliver a mixed-use house, breaking up the site to deliver more. Our ambition: a shop, a self-contained flat and a home. Three uses out of one.

“The new addition at the rear of the site is accommodated on just 323 square feet and has a total internal area of 745 square feet. Using a split section, the stair is the pinwheel around which the house moves. The dwelling is divided into spaces that are served or in service. The service spaces are short with 7-foot ceilings—storage, kitchen, robe and en suite, while the served spaces are grand with 12-foot ceiling—study, living and bedroom. With a maximum depth of 11 feet, light and ventilation are at your fingertips, always connecting you to the energy of the day while lending the house a strong sense of urbanity—you are living in the city.

“Externally the house is playful and textured—riffing the motives and materiality of the suburb that surrounds it. A little like a house from a Jacques Tati film, the façade feels alive with personality. Reclaimed bricks form the canvas, discarded broken ones reflect the historic sandstone base of the surrounding streets and are cut and folded to hide openings and protect views, while the upper bricks shift in scale to frame windows and support planting.

“During the making of the house artists were commissioned to present a generous edge. The front gate is a cast bronze sculpture by Mika Utzon-Popov, and an all-enveloping landscape by Nicholas Harding in the living room is able to be viewed from the street.”