A tiny pre-1911 cottage on a tiny 253m2 site, the design works hard to find generosity.

The project is limited by size. The house challenges the commonly prescribed room requirements of today’s homes and works with strategies of expanding constrained space to ensure an outcome that does not feel small.

Planning consolidates room types and circulation is programmed to ensure that all space is useful. A split-level diagram shares volumes, walls manipulate sight lines to edit out neighbours and instead invite long vistas to adjacent borrowed landscape.

The project is limited by budget. The existing house is moved forward, a relaxation to all boundary edges enables enough space to construct one special room to the rear. By building less, space needs to work harder.

Early, it was established that to enable generosity on a constrained site, the special room was to remain open to adaptation, void of fixed walls and cabinetry that dictate the permanence of the occupants’ routine.

A diagram of efficiency is borrowed from commercial tower-making where lift, stair and amenities core allow floorplates to be free and ever-changing.

The special room is an empty square serviced by a utility core, circumnavigated by a split-level stair and whose amenity and program is accessed at all levels. This core houses the laundry at ground, the fridge, pantry and air conditioning supply at the mid-level, and the prized DJ booth at level one – stacked vertically above one another to give program to otherwise dead circulation space. By removing the obstructions, the special room is then free, occupied only by loose furnishings to create a flexible, changeable space to cook, eat, relax, entertain or play, with half this room then given to outdoor space.

Though the site is not flood-affected, it sits immediately adjacent an overland flow path. The existing house was dilapidated by high moisture and water damage, and this, paired with the client’s brief for an enduring, low maintenance home, drove the extension to be constructed from durable brick and block, raised clear of the overland flow path.

The special room is robust. With doors open, the internal and external public space appear and operate as a single generous volume, sharing the same brick materiality. On a tight suburban site, the courtyard walls edit out the closeness of its neighbours and break only to invite long borrowed views to an adjoining green belt. Glimpses of the hillside character are invited and captured – of pitched roofs, ornate chimneys and obsolete antennas.

In a character suburb, the extension made of landscape walls is kept low, sleeving in below the line of the existing roof form.

The private dormitory spaces celebrate the cottage’s character, room proportions maintained – posts and ornate trims conserved.

Alongside rigorous consultation with the townplanner, the project seeks to challenge regulations for inner city setbacks sensitively. The project seeks to endure fashion in its honesty of building material and ability to adapt to a multitude of functions and ways of living.

A tiny pre-1911 cottage on a tiny 253m2 site, the design works hard to find generosity.

The existing house is moved forward, a relaxation to all boundary edges enables enough space to construct one special room to the rear.

The project builds less in order to provide generosity on a constrained site - the special room remains flexible, void of any fixed walls or cabinetry that could dictate the permanence of the occupants’ routine.

The room is an empty square, serviced by a utility core, circumnavigated by a split-level stair. By removing obstacles, the special room is free - occupied only by loose furnishings. With doors open, the internal and external public space operates as a single volume, sharing the same brick materiality.

The project challenges the commonly prescribed room requirements of today’s homes, working with strategies of expanding constrained space to ensure the small site does not feel small.