Little OG.....
about
We celebrated the heritage qualities of the front mews-facing room, and provided a new bathroom, leading to a cosy and composed living area with fireplace, linear hearth joinery and built-in bookshelves. We then created a central courtyard allowing transformative light penetration, which the living room (downstairs) and main bedroom (upstairs) both look out into. Ceiling heights rake down holistically – bedroom to bathroom (upper) to kitchen (lower). The innovation challenge was to detail the central courtyard to completely dissolve away, LITERALLY the essence of indoor-outdoor, through a series of sliding and stacking doors that move completely out of the way, creating one beautifully generous space. The courtyard landscaping together with highlight windows reinforce connection to both immediate and borrowed landscape on this compact site.
With sustainability a key consideration, timber becomes the defining materiality, an opportunity to express local construction that has beauty and warmth, expertly crafted joists and beams working together with Australian timber finishes to floors, windows, doors and joinery. Furnishings and styling equally important; Australian local furniture design is showcased as are local ceramicists and artists. The kitchen with its’ clerestory dictated light from all sides, and the stair features open timber-treads hung on steel rods to maximise the flow of space.
Sustainability
Strategies included, as with almost all of our projects, active and passive solar design, underground rainwater tank, Water-Sensitive garden design, FSC-Certified to all timber products for interior and exterior timber, and skylights throughout to provide transformative natural daylight and spatial quality deep into the ground floor. We also retrofitted high levels of thermal insulation to the heritage fabric as wells the new areas, and added smart-home features that reduce operational energy costs.