My name's Chris Gilbert and I was a project lead for harry house Coburg's in the north of Melbourne
bound by Sydney Road and Lygon Street so you have lots of amenity around this area
and fantastic access to things like Merry Creek um great food on Sydney road and it
was only 10 minutes from our studio so it was really fantastic working in the local context
the site was originally home to a double front head pre-war weatherboard cottage the client
wished to maintain as much of the warmth of the entry through that cottage as possible
but really wanted to produce a new lens to this amazing kind of ram shackle garden that existed
out the back which was a mix of fig trees and like overgrown kind of multi-generational um
foliage really it was super interesting super deep but the old house didn't connect with it
at all so the brief was to really reorientate the living space to create a frame to that lush garden
i grew up in country Victoria spending a lot of my time building cubbies and tree houses in our
small little bush block and there's something kind of primal and childish about that element of play
that you really want to replicate when you grow up like you want you want the best parts of that
to come through into your everyday life and we had a client that was interested in pursuing that as
well so the outcome is something that is quite unique to the standard kind of Melbourne like
box on the back of a pre-war cottage you end up with something that's much
more playful much more dynamic it's like you're living inside a textural object
the front part of the house retained the original cottage and it's not obvious that there's been
a big renovation done when you first arrive the sight line from the front door takes you straight
through the extension to the garden and the fig tree and people are immediately drawn to that
i'm Tanya i'm one of the homeowners here i live with my husband Pete and our three
boys who range in age from 6 up to 16. Harry is our dog and the house is named after him by our
youngest son who used to ask if we were visiting the harry house when we were doing site visits
the material selection in this building was quite important we really wanted materials that would
age well be robust and be quite honest like honest carpentry and you know materials and
textures that had a life and had like errors and mistakes in them because that that's what kind
of makes the tree house it's not this perfect polished thing the concrete obviously is never
going to go anywhere but also the INAX board it's indestructible it's actually fireproof
so i've got Japanese heritage the house has deliberately incorporated
Japanese style design elements archer already used those in prior projects and it was one of
the things that attracted me to work with them we have an old mizuya tansu an old Japanese
piece of furniture which is quite large and we wanted to make sure there was space for that to
be incorporated into the project the challenge of a long narrow site of course is how to get
light into all rooms of the house so for this building we kept the original pre-world cottage
and inserted a courtyard between the new and old building and what this does is allow
natural light straight into the rumpus room and like deep into it the main kids living space
while also allowing the landscape to wrap all the way around the building so no matter where you are
in this space you're looking out into the garden the floor area of this building is quite tight
we're talking just a little a bit over 200 square meters so in order to get the maximum amount of
amenity within that frame or that envelope we needed to look for alternate solutions
one of which is providing soft netted areas in the voids rather than additional rumpus
rooms and what the nets do which is pretty interesting is allow you to occupy an entire
space without needing furniture so rather than a room needing to be four by four to have a couch
in the corner you can just have a two and a half by three meter space and occupy that entire zone
obviously we use a lot of glass in our projects and in particular this project
and we find it really helps connect the user with the landscape um ends the sky
like these boxes are pretty unique really you have the opportunity to see garden and get this
really great sky view factor so the full height glass really captures both of those elements
another very Japanese element was the design of the bathrooms and that was having a separate
separate spaces for the toilet a separate space for the basin and
a separate space for bathing which is how Japanese bathrooms are configured
lots of people talk about kitchens being the heart of the home and
in that respect this project's no different the step down kitchen is really fantastic because
it allows the person who's using the kitchen to for their workspace to be at 900 mils
and just perfect for preparing food where the people on the other side of the bench
space are interacting with an object that's much more like a piece of furniture at table height
the house has been incredible to raise a young family in i love the light i love being in the
garden seeing the seasons and the weather change i love relaxing in it the project has exceeded
all my hopes and expectations it's incredible i'm most proud that tanya's happy with the outcome you
know it's her house that was designed for her and her family and if she's happy we're happy
you know it's a family house for living not for filming ironically