A new house for a young family on a 195 square meter corner laneway site.
The site is accessed from the two laneway frontages with no frontage to the street itself.
A site where it is necessary to carefully design to provide respect to the neighbours from overlooking and overshadowing.
Designing a house for such a site requires an unconventional a design approach.
On such a tiny site I was mindful of the need to provide green space to avoid further built form in the former back yards of this community. The design provides an equivalent open space area of 75% of the site, 30% of the site area in tree canopy and 55% of the site provided with deep soil planting.
With the brief to deliver a meaningful new home on a very small site for a small budget, we designed to find the same efficiency & simplicity in the construction, as the buildings of the 1970’s by the likes of former Perth architect Len Buckridge, more recently by Space agency.
Looking over the back fence of most houses in this area within North Perth will reveal the productive vegetable gardens of the Greek, Italian and Vietnamese families of the area. This seemed to give all the more reason to strive to achieve green space rather than built space to the site.
Locating the bedrooms at the ground floor level, provided intimate outlook and a perimeter ‘belt’ of green landscaping.
The first floor provides for the living, dining and kitchen along with the ‘backyard of lawn and trees.
Landscaping beds of over one meter deep and a meter wide ensure that it is possible to grow relatively large trees at first floor in ‘deep soil planting’.
These deep planter beds are provided at the pivotal laneway corner thereby providing privacy to the occupants but more importantly providing green space to the community. The planning orientates all living and outdoor entertainment areas to north, protected from the south west winds and allowing winter solar penetration into the house.
The central ground floor courtyard, although intimate allows natural light, winter solar penetration and natural ventilation through the house.
The courtyard also provides the ground floor master bedroom with a private outlook and allows natural ventilation avoiding the noise and exposure to the laneway.
The house with a total area of 152 square meters is only slightly larger than an apartment.
There is no garage, not even a carport, as the family car has been provided for with an area to park over trafficable lawn adjacent to the Laneway.
Behind the efficient and economical planning and construction, lies a more meaningful connection to this place for the owners.
Located just north of Hyde Park in North Perth, this is an area that has over time provided for our Indigenous people, the early European settlers, Chinese market gardeners, and migrants from the Greek, Italian and Vietnamese communities.
A design that celebrates the history and significance of its location, amongst the formerly connected swamps of the ‘Great Lakes District’.
Previously a place of an abundance of wildlife and a place of passage and encampment for indigenous people.
The area now known as Hyde Park was referred to by the early European settlers as ‘Third Swamp’ and to the indigenous people as ‘Boodjemooling’.
These fertile swamp areas were filled in by the early European settlers. Over time these areas became market gardens populated by Perth’s Chinese community.
With entire areas of swamp being ‘nibbled away’ and reclaimed, with roads and the freeway constructed between areas of swamp, the Long Neck Turtle populations of the swamps are no longer able to safely migrate between water holes.
Simple yet playful use of concrete upstands and roof edges expresses the ‘nibbling away’ of the swampland environment of the Long Neck Turtles of the locality.
It is intended that the landscaping will reflect native swampland species such as the Paperbark trees and reeds.
Colours of the materials of the house have been chosen to compliment the colour of the Paperbarks, with a chalky off-white face brick and the timber cladding will be allowed to weather naturally over time to take on a patina of its own. The yellow blossom of the tree will feature in the blinds that appear and disappear just like the blossom.