Baracco + Wright Architects

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden 

Baracco+Wright Architects

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner
Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner

PROJECT TEA
Louise Wright , Mauro Baracco, Oscar Sainsbury, Mitchell Grant

MANUFACTURERS
Absolute Brilliance, Seves Glassblock

BUILDERS
Grenville Construction

BUILDER
Tom Petty

PHOTOGRAPHS
Rory Gardiner

AREA
26 M²

YEAR
2023

LOCATION
Fitzroy North, Australia

CATEGORY
Houses, Extension

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner

Text description provided by architect.

This building by Baracco+Wright Architects is an outbuilding to a 1980s concrete block house in Melbourne, Australia designed by Ross Perrett. It is 1.5 storey with a mezzanine and only 26m2 footprint.

A double-height void and full-height column connect the mezzanine and ground floor. This is Baracco+Wright's second masonry building, preferring to work with lightweight materials and suspended floors.

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner
Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner

This building is conceived as a building that provides that extra bedroom or garage-type space an extension usually provides, but as a separate building in its own right because the existing house did not suit the extension.

It homes bikes, garden equipment and a flexible space for a range of activities.

The outbuilding is in dialogue with the original house's solidity and simple geometrical shapes common to the late Brutalist style.

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner
Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner
Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner

The solidity is translated into transparency through glass blocks allowing light to pass through to the garden and to create an expansive interior spatial quality.

The triangle-shaped plan is an outcome of multiple factors: a response to the simple geometry of the original house as well as the push-pull of the tight site angling away from the neighbors to not overshadow.

The shape strengthens the perception of depth created by already existing garden beds that also homed a large Birch tree, importantly maintaining its root ball that had grown to suit the bed.

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner
Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner
Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
© Rory Gardiner

The building's footprint is almost exactly where a concrete driveway was – the existing slab suggesting the location for the building. The resulting wedge-shaped 'deep gardens' are an important response to the site conditions leaving the long view available.

In their turn, they create the pointed end which is in conversation with the house and the view from inside out.

The effect of the garden on either side and the pointed end facing the house is that the building appears quite small from the house while the garden appears larger.

In a play of shapes a small round volume housing a sauna sits off to the side. Inside, the spatial quality is animated by the colors and shadows of the deep garden.

Outbuilding, with Deep Garden
Plans

Baracco + Wright Architects
T +61 403 785097
Baracco + Wright Architects
Room 105/35 Johnston St, Collingwood VIC 3066, Australia