An existing Post-War house with a North facing rear garden.

The proposal adds a ‘Garden Room’ to the rear of the house. A space that can be utilised as a robust living space by the growing family and be quarantined as a studio apartment for family who visit from overseas for extended periods. The plan of the existing residence is turned to face the rear garden with a new deck space and reconfiguration of part of the kitchen to address the Northern aspect.

The edge condition becomes a playful mediation between light and shadow. Through careful use of material and lighting the taught external skin around the circulation becomes a piece of theatre in the house – shadows from the landscape and the movement of the family through the house cast a subtle trace on the translucent skin. Day and night reveal a different nature of the house and its occupancy.

Internally the linings are eroded in places to reveal a raw skeleton of humble materials – LVL studs and particleboard that are overlaid with a veneer of wall lining. The illusion of the solidity of the clean white plasterboard spaces is broken and the grain of construction celebrated.