The Left-Over-Space House

THE LEFT-OVER-SPACE HOUSE

Cox Rayner Architects

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

ARCHITECT IN CHARGE
Casey, Rebekah Vallance

PHOTOGRAPHS
Casey Vallance, Christopher Frederick Jones

YEAR
2012

LOCATION
Paddington, Australia

CATEGORY
Housese

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

Text description provided by architect.

This narrow private house demonstrates what can be achieved on the myriad of ‘left-over’ spaces in inner cities, such as disused easements or parking lots.

In this case, a 3 metre wide tiny caretaker’s cottage, adjoining a Heritage Hall has been recycled and linearly extended into a family house for parents and two children.

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

Although challenged by its site, they set about grafting old with new elements that belie its constraints and pursuing their philosophy of making everything count.

In the three metre wide frontage to the old cottage is a new study designed through its portals and window boxes to engage the street.

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

Privacy from close placed neighbours is gained by a series of iron screens whose perforations for light are the patterns of peeling paint of weatherboards on one of the neighbouring cottages.

Where the site slightly opens up behind the cottage to an open, roofed and screened staircase atrium forms the primary social space.

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

A small bridge is a library connecting it to kitchen and living room, and beyond to stacked bedrooms and a stair to a roof deck.

The screens slide or swing out to engage the neighbours when desired and to mediate different solar positions.

They are one of an array of details rethinking the typology of the private house, no matter how small, as both sanctuary and communal participant.

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

The project recycles an existing small cottage as a piece of the house to which extensions in front and back are grafted in 3 metre and 5 metre wide portions respectively.

The forward portion is a single level study room for architectural practice, or if later to be used by a new owner, a potential small office.

The former cottage is opened up to form a conduit to the rear portion, it also comprising the dining space.

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

As the site falls steeply to the rear, two levels of bedrooms are attached to the old cottage piece, with a staircase atrium running longitudinally beside a library which also bridges the front and rear parts of the house.

The atrium belies the narrowness of the site, the stairs being seating treads, and scale generated by volume.

This space manages the climate of the subtropics with layers of perforated iron screens which alternatively project and open up to the external conditions.

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance
The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance

The mobile screens are intrinsic to an approach to private house design that facilitates sanctuary and engagement of the community as desired.

A series of inserted window boxes, a side door to an easement and sliding downstairs doors each play a role in participation in or closure off from other spaces or to neighbours and passers-by.

The Left-Over-Space House
© Casey Vallance


The Left-Over-Space House
Upper Floor Plan
The Left-Over-Space House
Lower Floor Plan


The Left-Over-Space House
Section