Cultural Value – Sydney

A crafted extension was carefully connected to the retained and refashioned rear of an original 1960’s yellow brick home located in Woolooware, Sydney. The retained bungalow allows the cultural value of its suburban streetscape to be preserved, while also supporting environmental and budget outcomes. Its interior carefully configures bedrooms and utility spaces, with vaulted skylights carved within the original roof expanding several spaces to light and sky. Designed by Christopher Polly Architect, a sharply folding form unlocks a compressed front hall while allowing the location of interstitial courtyards for light, ventilation and multiple aspects at the centre of the home – in turn promoting an interplay of private and public rooms across front and rear.
The two-storey pavilion provides an expansive double-height living area, and serves as a generously proportioned ‘garden room’ with large apertures capturing sky and landscape views. Its stair element extends the established circulation condition from the original front entry, while also marking a loose threshold for the arrangement of two smaller rooms at one end of its volume. It achieves improved privacy from neighbours while concurrently providing desired transparency for unfettered spatial relationships within its volume and across its two parts for strengthened connections to its place.
It employs an enviable approach which embodies a strong focus of the memory and character of the existing home within the new rear spaces, while an interior of considered honey and grey material tones strongly reference the two distinct exterior materials. A northern blade screen and a pinched rear profile enable greater solar access onto the thermal mass of a reverse concrete-veneer wall and ground floor slab, with its cantilevered terrace edge and sculpted step element doubling as seats for direct enjoyment of the garden. Handsome and intelligent… we love the Binary House.