A Calligrapher handed three books to his wife, she placed them in a random stack on the table… “We want The Books House”… they said.
The Architect understood that the books were not only a reference to a home he had previously designed named The Six Degrees of Separation, but also to the ledges and shelves of Sydney-Hawkesbury sandstone outcrops that surface on the steep escarpments of the northern side of Sydney Harbour, including the block of land owned by the Calligrapher and the Businesswoman.
‘Tama’ is short for Tamarama: a Sydney beach suburb, famous for its hedonistic surf culture, gradually being gentrified by a population that exchanges stock market tips while running barefoot to the ocean with a surfboard tucked under their arms.
NOT SO SUBURBAN, SUBURBAN. A new dwelling where a generous visual and physical connection to the greater suburban block is the imperative.
Sydney, Australia. Traditionally, regardless of orientation the Australian suburban block is longer than it is wide. Typically, dwellings are built to the side boundary setback in order to maximise the floor plate along its length. The result is often a feeble connection to the rear yard rendering it the bastion of the weekend bbq and resulting in poor solar access, inefficient circulation and suffering from a lack of natural ventilation. Further, in the absence of a panoramic view, as is the case with this house, the result can leave one feeling walled in, constrained and disconnected.
Design ingenuity and a dose of respect for its original Gothic Revival bones deliver a blighted 1870s harbourside home in Sydney into the 21st century.
CROSSING THE GOTHIC REVIVAL threshold of Maybanke, the waterfront home on Sydney Harbour with a distinguished history, is to traverse 150 years in a few short steps.
Panoramic water views, an abundance of penetrating antipodean light and a five-storey sculptural stair – that together would surely have befuddled and amazed the 1870s sensibilities of the individuals who built the original building – leave the modern visitor in no doubt which century this home now squarely belongs.
Sovereign consists of 23 town houses in Sylvania. The site has direct water frontage and panoramic views on the Georges River, Sothern Sydney. Half off the site has not been developed and remains bushland. This area contains dramatic native sandstone escarpments.
The Cricket Pitch House is a free standing dwelling in North Bondi, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
The client’s brief for a five bedroom house is centred on a garden suitable for backyard cricket for the growing family.
Located in a well-established suburban part of Sydney, the building’s form recalls the pitched roofs of its environs. The roof ridge runs diagonally across building, creating four different facades, each responding to their orientation.
Palm Beach House project is the transformation of an existing waterfront holiday villa in Palm Beach, Sydney. The project is a restrained approach to a traditional European vernacular, exploring bespoke quality detailing, materiality and architectural framing.
With the existing house ineffectively dealing with scale limitations, the brief was primarily to explore how we could reintroduce a higher quality of spatial resolution. The plans and volumes were subsequently rationalized around better circulation, view corridors and access to the water.
An architect from Sydney and his team acquire a listed commercial building. The newly furnished rooms show in an exemplary fashion how a lighting solution for offices which is based on perception-oriented lighting design can be both effective and pleasing.
In a strategic move to consolidate its facilities across nine buildings on the Camperdown/Darlington campuses, Woods Bagot designed the flagship home for the new University of Sydney Business School. Catering to over 6,000 students, the project includes three 550-seat lecture theatres, eight 100-seat study rooms, 40 seminar rooms, a learning hub and 1,500 sqm of informal learning space.
Working within the bones of a solid, well-constructed water front home built in the ‘60s on Sydney’s Parramatta River, the adaptive reuse of this multi-level dwelling involved removing the entirety of the internal workings of the existing structure, re-invigorating the central circulation core, promoting light and cross ventilation while embracing the waterfront outlook to the North West.
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