Architect Builds A Tiny Brick Home With a Courtyard at Its Heart (House Tour)

The scale of the house is really really  small but every single space from the   hallway to the lounge to the kitchen  to wherever you are in the house, you gain the benefit of this  courtyard room into every other space. I'm Kim Bridgland from Edition Office  Architects and I'm Aaron Roberts and  we're at the Naples Street House. The Naples Street House is located on the Eastern  suburbs of Melbourne here in Wurundjeri country. The brief for this home began from the  premise of a multigenerational house. Another key requirement was that the  home needed to have a presence to the   street and that really drove the need for a  facade, I guess a formalism or strength of   having this brick facade wrap up the front  wall and over to the roof of the house. When there's this sense of a multigenerational  home it's also important to have these, I guess,   interstitial spaces and discreet spaces that  circle around that home and allow that sense of   being able to kind of recluse and draw together  is really important in this kind of home. The house has has a slight falling grade from  the rear of the site falling  gently down to the street. With the gravel driveway rising up with a small  little gravel mound, from that galvanised steel   entry alcove we walk into a long corridor,  that axial hallway runs adjacent to that   central courtyard and gives you a glimpse to that  heart of the home when you enter the front door. Running parallel to that entrance hallway we  have the two children's bedrooms, the bathroom   and our client's bedroom suite with one  more generous open space with a robe,   a bedroom and their own private ensuite. At the end of that long corridor you enter  into one shared social space of the house at   the Northern end of the property, taking in the  dining room, the kitchen and the lounge room, and on the Western Wing we have our  laundry, the elder parents room and   then continuing that idea of having axial sight  lines from the kitchen through the dining space so we look through that minor hallway through  an open study space which opens to the street. Working within dense urban or suburban environments we're always   looking for opportunities for real sanctuary. For this project it's very  much an inward looking house,   the bedrooms create almost a defensive  shield, they hold the outer perimeter   of the house allowing all of the social,  the shared spaces of the home to all focus   around the central courtyard and soak in that  sunlight and soaking that sense of silence. In some ways there's this sense of like a denial  of context in a way but often in these kinds of   conditions we do look for those assets that are  kind of broader from the site, we harvest the sky and we borrow from this enormous and extraordinary gum tree and we create a site onto itself. I think it's really interesting how we kind  of conceptualise homes, typically you'll draw   diagrams to allow for particular kind of  relationships to place or to frame certain   views or to bring light in in certain ways and in  this instance we obviously did that but we also   were diagramming the way that people would live  together and how they could share space together. So for the compact nature of this home,  the kitchen axis is fulcrum point within   the social heart of the home, it's part of the  dining space and it's part of the living space really opens onto every aspect of this home  through that central courtyard and so it was   really important to have appliances that gave  us that sense of design freedom so that the   qualities, the atmosphere of the home could be the  thing that we celebrate, and supporting a large   multigenerational family within a small footprint  home we needed really practical, pragmatic aspects   like a large freezer, a large fridge, discreetly  concealed within this fairly small footprint   kitchen and then having that really accessible  hardworking, utilitarian laundry space and having highly energy efficient appliances that  give you the full range of fabric care. So the Fisher & Paykel appliances in the home  really allowed us to plan a more flexible space   and allow for a kitchen which can be used  by a multitude of the family all at once. The material palette of the house is consciously  robust and consciously simple, we have a   burnished concrete floor, we have spotted gum plywood walls, we have this immersive wrapping of   brickwork over the outer facade up over the roofs  and down to this outdoor room of the courtyard. Clarifying all of the key spaces of the house   so we have a painted ceiling that lifts  dramatically and also the walls bring   this warmth to what could be conceived as a  very hard outer shell a very hard building. Looking back on the project and visiting  today, the cinematic quality of moving   around the home is really what  excites me most about the project. There is always such a great sense  of delight coming into the house,   circling around this outdoor room and  feeling that sense of theatricality it's   the formal nature of the home and the roof  forms lift up and down and ebb and flow.

Channel: The Local Project

Views: 145,272

Keywords: tiny brick home, The Local Project, house tour, real estate, interior design, architectural digest, modern home design, home inspiration, home tour, home decor, home design ideas, interior inspiration, renovation ideas, interior styling, elle decor, apartment therapy, tiny house, tiny home, tiny house tour, tiny house decor, brick home, brick house, interior design tips, home decor 2024, brick home design, brick home build, tiny home ideas, tiny home living, bricks

Id: lr5seAoe-qs

Length: 6min 40sec (400 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024