Welcome Departure

Emerging from beyond the plane street tree, it’s abundantly clear the house is intended to engage with the immediate public realm. It’s a welcomed departure from the typical Australian suburban notion of privacy where quite often bedrooms are used as the building equivalent of Venetian blinds, snapped shut to protect a seemingly threatened sense of perceived seclusion.

“Standing at the footpath, you can actually see through all the way to the backyard. This is part of our interest in creating places of engagement rather than places that are closed to the public,” explains Adi from FIGR Architecture Studio.

This sense of transparency is heightened by a landscape berm in the shape of a wedge along the northern boundary. Doubling as a concealed bike store, this elevated garden ascends to
one side, only to slip past the underside of the upper-storey weatherboard building volume. And in doing so, effortlessly framing a long unhindered view under the belly of the structure – right through to the rear of the lot.

Crimped and folded, the origami-like front elevational gable form alludes to a local building vernacular. In its topography the principal building façade appears kinetic, yet not overly theatrical. Otherworldly, yet triggers memory of a not-too-distant past.

Openings only revealing themselves behind pivoting batten screens, rigorously integrated and detailed into the external wall build up.

Like many homes of this kind, it starts with the site. Then the client. Lauren is a dietician and Michael is an engineer who designs mechanical dinosaurs. They have two kids and an ambitious project brief.

Longtime locals of Essendon, a suburb in the north-west of Melbourne, the clients saw themselves as people who had a vested interest in building a home that met their growing family needs but one that would sit well within the streetscape.

“This house and this property has been with my family for a long time. My grandmother said to me: ‘You will always live here, Michael’,” the client recalls.

With the original weatherboard cottage being as dilapidated as it was, the clients deliberated whether to engage a drafting company to draw up what they already had in mind. Instead, in their search for the best design outcome, Lauren and Michael decided to invest in appointing an architect.

Prior to putting pen to yellow-trace, Adi and the FIGR team provided the clients with a detailed survey in order to deep-dive and really work out what the project priorities were.

Once together, then another briefing session with Lauren and Michael individually. Such a detailed record of client input provided a Petri dish for ideas: and only then were concept drawings started.

“Being a narrow-fronted property I always had a preconception that we build boundary to boundary, but the architect’s concepts opened my eyes to smarter design and different possibilities,” says Michael, remembering being pleasantly surprised by the initial design process.

At a touch under 200-square-metres, the resultant design is a compact home with a hard-working plan all the while managing to feel generously spacious inside. Adi attributes this finding of opportunities in the under-utilised to ”removing redundancies and achieving more with less.” Be it an outdoor-indoor banquette seat, a suspended net activating an otherwise utilitarian corridor, or the raked ceiling that makes use of volume otherwise lost to the roof.