Family Canopy—New Build in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs

The challenge for the architects of this new house in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs was to create a home for eight people that could adapt over time, while not seeming crowded. The team at Incidental Architecture (formerly Matt Elkan Architecture) met the clients by word of mouth and found a family that was not only large, with two parents and six kids from age 6 to 17, but who also liked to host family from out of town and invite their community into their home from time to time.

The site is a 557-square-metre block with neighbours on each side – not a lot of space for a house for eight people. The solution that Incidental devised was to create overhangs on the first level so that the house is wider upstairs than its footprint below. “In [the Northern Suburbs] there’s a lot of really bad densification going on,” says Matt Elkan. Irrawaddy House is a conscious effort to densify differently, with a sense of space and connection to nature, especially on the ground floor. “When you look at the plan, there’s an awful lot happening upstairs, which means not much has to happen downstairs. Downstairs can be a lot smaller, with overhangs around the building and more engagement with the outside.

On the ground floor, there is a guest suite at the front of the house and a music room for the whole family. The house is then split into two with a long thoroughfare through the middle and rooms to each side. Right in the centre is an outdoor courtyard with a water feature and papyrus plant that reaches up through both storeys. This void continues inside to one side, creating double-height space above the living room bringing light into the house while also creating a little moment of contemplation. Next to the courtyard in the garden is a deck with a set of monkey bars that create opportunities for play. “They’re not just for the kids,” says Daina Cunningham from Incidental Architecture. “The adults use them regularly.”

In the centre of the home is a large kitchen with a walk-in pantry, while at the back of the house is the main living and dining space that spills out onto a deck. Here a corner of the house makes way for a very large tallow tree, while steel beams with a triangular base support the first storey which juts out over the deck. Seen from the backyard, these supports resemble the stilts of delta houses of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar. “The clients are of Burmese heritage and have very fond memories of these delta houses in which everything happens upstairs so that they can bring boats in underneath,” says Daina. “The water just flows through underneath.”

Upstairs, the overhangs on the back and sides of the house create extra space for the bedrooms. At the front is the main bedroom, a study, a large laundry room and a library for the whole family. At the back are the kids rooms (two mediumsize bedrooms, four small bedrooms), two bathrooms with showers, a separate bathroom with a bath and a large central living and study area. In other words, a lot. There is also extra space in the loft storage, which is accessed by a ladder. The four smallest bedrooms are very small at only 2.3 x 1.9 metres but each has their own cupboard and desk with coloured pinboard, and the architecture is flexible so that they can be joined into two medium-sized rooms in future if needed. “A lot of it was to do with their immediate family, but then how that will change as the kids get older,” says Daina. “As they move on, you don’t want to be left with an empty house.”

Despite the number of rooms, the house feels calm. This is in part due to the materials used. Rather than going with render and plaster, the house is clad in timber and fibre cement sheets on the outside and, on the inside, timber which has been installed over shade cloth on the ceilings to add a level of acoustic dampening. The house is also porous with large louvred windows assisting the central void in venting hot air during summer. On the upper storey, the bedrooms are the same level as the neighbours to one side, so oblique shutters have been used to let in light while directing the view and retaining privacy.

As Australia’s population changes, factors like intergenerational living are creating the need for more homes of a larger size to accommodate different types of families. This house shows how clever design can create lots of amenity that is also flexible for other families to inhabit in years to come. The family who lives here now has already invited their community over to the house, where the ground floor living room and deck provide more than enough space for everyone. For Matt and the team the project was a fantastic example of social sustainability, which is about building for community. “In our societies, people are building fortresses and tucking themselves away from neighbours and communities, and then wondering why they’re unhappy,” he says. “These guys are just completely the opposite.”

Inside issue 98 — Grab the issue here.