Every project begins with an idea or ambition. What was the guiding vision for Garden Tower House from the outset, and how did it evolve throughout the design process?

The dense urban fabric of Cremorne is under intense development pressure, with huge whole-site-consuming developments towering over original workers’ cottages. Within this context, and on a tight 144 sqm site, the resurrection of a dilapidated weatherboard Victorian could quite understandably be a surrender to the limitations of its traditional plan form and tricky site constraints.

A quick and direct fix-up was initially envisaged, however something more ambitious evolved during the design process as our client grew in the belief that long-term programmatic needs could be satisfied on the site.

With a full house brief and no space, Garden Tower House is a gymnastic exercise in making a family home with all the suburban amenities, fit into an extremely tight site. The need to build hard on boundaries, and to project the plan upwards, was a challenging necessity.

The project sits on a remarkably narrow inner-city block. How did those spatial constraints become a catalyst for the final design rather than a limitation?

In such tight planning, every millimetre has to work hard to realise programmatic potential, every wall surface needed to contribute to supporting family life.

The new study room inserted into the existing plan, for example, variously offers workspace, spare bedroom, reading nook or sports fans retreat. Spaces are small but always aim for delight.

All the components of a full sized house; water tank, solar panels, fireplace and flue, shed and services, have all been absorbed in pursuit of visual clarity.

The adjoining laneway is seconded into garden space with a sliding fence panel that borrows lateral space from the public realm

The garden feels like the heart of the home. How did landscape influence the architecture, and why was it so important to the overall experience?

At every opportunity, lush greenery is introduced in small pockets of planted area that, in total, seek to offer verdant backyard surroundings where none are possible. There is a vertical dimension to the planting that sets up the whole building, its cavities and surfaces, to be overtaken by climbing leafiness that eventually links gardens across all levels.

The ambition is that Garden Tower House will, over time, become increasingly attached to and embedded in nature, offering cooling and calming respite from the pressing urban context.

Materiality plays an important role in distinguishing old from new. How did you decide which elements of the original cottage to retain, and where did you feel it was important to introduce contrast?

Previous unsympathetic additions to the original cottage have been removed and the front porch and original building facade restored. This included new windows, door, verandah fretwork with council’s consultation and a new picket fence. There are moments or hints of contemporary additions at the street front but deliberately kept to a minimum such as the decorative steel fly wire door.

The existing weatherboard house had to be entirely refurbished - it had fallen into disrepair. Careful attention to cornices, skirting and what is ‘new’ and ‘old’ has been exhaustively considered. Where a clearly new room such as the bathroom was added and the flexible study space, a large sliding door reads as a contemporary insertion within the heritage house, clearly delineating that it is new but sitting sympathetically. Small touches assume a critical role in clarifying the right amount of contemporaneity.

Externally, the new tower forms are visibly different to the original and a material gap is used to differentiate between new and old. A glazed link visually separates heritage from the contemporary portion, giving breathing room but also provides space for a level transition down from the heritage house to the new addition. The new forms deliberately sit back and behind the existing cottage to balance the austere blockwork skin.

Internally, this link bridges the heritage house and the new contemporary addition, with a fully timber lined interior signalling the transition. The same floorboards continue from the heritage house through to the proposed addition, wrapping down to become the stair and seat. As a space it is integral in fusing the spaces together.

The two breeze block towers create such a distinctive identity. What drew you to this material, and how does it perform beyond its visual impact?

The design is responsive to the mixed development character of the area, whilst remaining respectful to the residential heritage character. The singular, all-encompassing outer skin of breeze-block, was employed to diffuse the boundary interface and moderate the two-way arm-wrestle between opportunity and detriment.

Light and privacy seem carefully balanced throughout the home. How did you approach creating openness while still maintaining a sense of retreat within a dense urban context?

The breezeblock was crucial in order to achieve the balance of light and privacy in this context. Externally, the tower elements appear bluff and veiled, mediating the private realm from the surrounding context. From inside, sunlight filters through and views out are glimpsed through the myriad holes of the block pattern. The open blockwork also provides a climbing frame for the vegetation to overtake.

Studio Bright often creates homes that feel deeply connected to nature, even in urban settings. How does Garden Tower House reflect your broader design philosophy?

Australia is known for its suburban sprawl and many of our suburbs suffer from having too much space. Increasingly, we need to address how to maximise inner urban areas without losing their fine grain character.

We see small house projects as an opportunity to explore larger urban issues about densifying. In this project, the lane becomes a borrowed landscape, a space of shared amenity and connection between neighbours: a tiny urban place.

Looking back on the completed project, is there a detail, space or design move that you're especially proud of—perhaps one that visitors don't immediately notice?

Our hope is for the house to contribute back to the city and for it to demonstrate some ideas for densifying and enlivening our residential streets. We’d like to think that by using the unused bin lane as a new front access we have succeeded in making an unloved part of the city more valued.