The original home was built by Hugh Allen in 1906 and it was in a very run-down state.
We knew we needed to retain and restore that,
but at the same time create a big open and generous living space for the family of seven.
I'm Madeleine Blanchfield, Director of Madeleine Blanchfield Architects,
I worked on this project from inception to completion with the project architect Adrianna
Basile and it's been at least five years in the making so it's exciting to see it completed.
This house is probably about five kilometers from the CBD then in the other direction to the
east it's probably another five kilometers to the beach, so it's a very special spot.
It's also Gadigal and Bidjigal land and we acknowledge the traditional custodians
of this land and pay our respects to the elders past and present.
We restored the existing front fence and garden and that was one of the big, I think,
achievements of this project is that the much-loved front side garden is still there,
and now when you enter the house you actually walk through it to the front door which is
pushed back on the site, so you pass the existing heritage home and then enter in the new portion.
There's quite a clear delineation between where the old building stops and new building starts,
that was very important to us architecturally and is in line with the Burra Charter and Heritage
approach. There's a casual living area on the right hand side which has windows to
the East and the garden and windows to the West and the city and when it's all open
it's almost like an outdoor pavilion. It's very humble in scale compared to
the existing heritage building and that's exactly what we were after.
We needed to draw people downstairs in a celebratory way so we've got a quite a dramatic
spiral staircase made of concrete and steel and it lands right in the middle of the living and dining
areas but in a way that's quite sculptural and it just becomes a part of the space.
The living area opens out to the garden and pool in a very indoor-outdoor way so
when it's all opened up there's really not much separation between the garden and the spaces.
We decided to draw on the red bricks which appear on the heritage facade in places,
and we basically built the entire volume of the extension out of brick. We have portions which
are laid in a hit-and-miss style to bring light in but also give a sense of cocooning the space.
The kitchen is very simple and refined, it's actually got a whole lot of things going on
behind pocket doors which enables it to be in the space and very open but also very functional.
There's a lot of walnut in the kitchen and beams around the ceiling which also do some work
structurally and air conditioning and lighting is incorporated in those in a really discreet way.
There's a very, very large dining table designed by Kai Lu,
we created a special space for it which is essentially underground and then we had to
find clever ways of drawing light into that space to make it feel really good to be in.
One of the tricks was to put a skylight up through the garden which drops down at the
back of the dining table and delivers a really soft gentle light to that space.
The flooring on the main living level is terrazzo, which is a really beautiful
and warm material that we could run inside and outside and around the pool.
and then on the upper level there's mostly timber but we've changed the
color of the timber between the old and new portions to highlight that separation.
It's really nice to come back and see the house being used by the family because it's a big family
and a lively one and it's just lovely to have that sense of calm and separation from each other,
but also that they are able to be together, so I think the house gives them those little
moments of escape and also togetherness and that's really beautiful to see play
out after the completion of what was a very big and complicated project.