After living in this character cottage for 5 years, the client has decided to refresh this little gem but more importantly, to resolve the disconnection between the house and the outdoor spaces. The architectural solution is to remove the unutilised swimming pool and to relocate/ reconnect the detached garage with a gallery. This disposition of spaces responded to the shape of the land and extended the connection with the landscape. This gesture also allowed a continuous enclosure and protection from the neighbour’s right of way, reclaiming the western aspect that used to be driveway and carparking, transforming it into an expansive protected courtyard.
The addition assimilates the mass and proportion of the original house into a series of contemporary form that is different in character, but in similar formal qualities and materiality. The connecting point of the addition is perched on a solid brick base that extends in a bi-directional manner. On the one hand it terraces downward to the natural ground level, on the other hand it extrudes upward to form a series of striated columns defining a transitional space between the new and the old.
