If you are looking to renovate a heritage home, this is a great example of it. This former workers' cottage sits on the corner of two streets in Fremantle, Australia. It served the architects as an exciting basis for building a modern single-family home. The concept was to preserve and highlight the existing cabin.
Renovate and revitalize a listed house
The house consists of a self-contained office and a bedroom. These can be rented out by the owner in the future if desired. The highly polished surfaces of Nero Marquina marble, white oxide concrete and glossy black wood create a dramatic contrast to the raw and matt surfaces of the house. Thus, an intentional contrast was created, referring to the original materials with an opposite surface. The owners intended to use the nearby parks and cafes as an extension when renovating their heritage home.
Renewing classic architecture in a modern way
The brief called for a modern family home that stayed true to the popular workers' cottage while still incorporating functional and exciting additions. For this reason, there were minimal interventions, which you can also implement if you are renovating a listed house.
Such changes included installing skylights in the hallway, converting the existing dilapidated kitchen and bathroom into a larger, family-sized bathroom. The architects also renovated the laundry room and the originally round veranda, as well as carried out general restoration work.
To realize the project, the owners hired heritage architect Phillip Griffith, taking his recommendations. The only change to the existing external walls was to widen an existing opening to connect to the new works.
The team also hidden the new building walls under the existing eaves. A kitchen, a courtyard, an office, a garage and an upstairs bedroom and bathroom make up the new work.
Design a functional minimalist living space
By dividing the living areas, the upstairs offices and bedrooms can be rented out in the future if desired. The ground floor office needed to be consistent in size and shape with the neighboring commercial tenancies on George Street. High-quality materials based on the region's existing language were also crucial to maintaining the character of the street.
The office's angled parapet references the roofline of the original cottage. A suppression of the building height through the middle of the site rises above the street. In this way it faces east. Materiality links the project to its context.
The red brick masonry takes up the existing elements of the grouting, while the concrete lintels interpret the former lintels of the hut in a modern way. The tri-tone glazed red brick wall, laid in an ombre pattern, wraps around the office and plays with the home's traditional red tones. The charcoal aluminum cladding above was intended to fade into the background and dominate the street level.
The key to the brief that allowed the architects to renovate such a listed house was a feeling of spaciousness on the small plot. The sight lines from the entrance through the inner courtyard to the row of houses were crucial to the design.
A suspended dark ceiling forms the transition from the house building to the kitchen with the higher ceiling. Level thresholds and matching floor coverings also run from the kitchen to the courtyard. Storage spaces in the existing bedrooms also modernize the house in a respectful way. The robes do not hit existing surfaces.
Renovate the outdoor area and listed house
Landscaping was therefore envisioned as an extension of architecture. The architects designed various additions, such as a pond and a concrete barbecue area. The latter was actually a literal extension of the ground floor.
Furniture designer Jack Flanagan was commissioned to create a sculptural metal base for the freestanding marble dining table. This fits perfectly into the fixed furniture element. Steele & Co. steel fabricators collaborated in the construction of the vertical louvers that filter western sun to the upper bedroom and other custom steel elements.
