Jack & Jill House | Breathe architecture

Northcote / Australia / 2011

5
5 Love 3,735 Visits Published
Unfurling downward, in a series of terraced platforms and volumes, Jack and Jill house is tactically configured by its context. Abutting the weatherboard skin of the preceding single storey home, the transition to the rear is punctured, capturing northern light and channeling breeze thorough small open courtyards adjoining a novel, stepped floor plan. With this approach, the new volume is passively conditioned, employing thermal mass, overhangs and awnings to mediate or promote solar gain. From within the open plan or on the decks beyond, occupants are visually connected throughout. Both robust and playful in palette, the addition addresses a common archetype with an innovative and varied spatial solution. Unhindered sightlines allow interaction between dining, kitchen, booth seating, living room and adjoining decks, promoting various modes of social and spatial habitation. Parents can observe their children as joinery, decked and grassed planes are inhabited and re-appropriated through play. The internal environment quality benefits from thermal outcomes of strategic passive ventilation and solar planning, an inert, raw material selection and through the promotion of occupant operability over mechanical conditioning. The archetypal suburban model here takes a recessive approach to the heritage streetscape; contextually scale appropriate and largely invisible from the main street. Evading contemporary trends and mock Victorian architectural idioms, the Jack and Jill house instead presents an atypical approach to a familiar scenario. Responding to the topography, the building steps down with external platforms and volumes toward the lower rear boundary. Nestling into the landscape, greater internal volumes are achieved without breaching the contextual script. The upper level peers over the existing roof pitch while the now elevated master bedroom captures views to the city. The clients home needed to be to be playful, robust & engage with its young occupants as well as their parents. We gave them spaces that could work in all seasons, a home that was light filled and warm. A home that is bespoke and textural - A home, like a family, with up’s & downs.
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    Unfurling downward, in a series of terraced platforms and volumes, Jack and Jill house is tactically configured by its context. Abutting the weatherboard skin of the preceding single storey home, the transition to the rear is punctured, capturing northern light and channeling breeze thorough small open courtyards adjoining a novel, stepped floor plan. With this approach, the new volume is passively conditioned, employing thermal mass, overhangs and awnings to mediate or promote solar gain....

    Project details
    • Year 2011
    • Work started in 2009
    • Work finished in 2011
    • Status Completed works
    • Type Single-family residence
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