Northcote House | LLDS

LLDS has re-conceptualised the Victorian terrace typology in response to the existing urban context to create a compact inner-city house in Melbourne, Australia. 

Sited on a narrow plot orientated east-west, 22m long and 4.6m wide, the main design move was to elevate the ground to form a roof garden to address the lack of garden spaces. The brown roof supports local ecology in an urban context. Below the free-form timber structure is a hall-like room with a kitchen, dining room, and entrance veranda reminiscent of the neighbourhood's large factory lofts and Victorian church halls. The highly textured concrete internal wall provides thermal mass and improves the dining room's acoustics by reducing the flutter echo effect caused by the parallel boundary walls. 

The ground floor is spatially organised around a circular snug with a central void bringing natural daylight and ventilation to the depth of the House. The snug divides the ground floor into the east and west bedrooms, each with antechambers that function as utilities and ensuites. The stair around the snug creates a dramatic descent into the space, furnished with bespoke upholsteries and dark green velvet curtains; there are no internal doors between rooms to allow the client’s dog to move freely, except for the bathrooms. Dark Green colour is chosen to complement the warm timber stairs and lining. The snug is furnished with kangaroo and deer hide, all locally sourced as a by-product of farming. It evokes a sense of primitiveness and contrasts with the raw concrete interior. The east bedroom has a concrete vaulted soffit, which transfers the weight of the roof above. The House is interconnected with three stairs to encourage circular movement and eliminate the need for corridor spaces. 

The East and West façades are designed as trellises for climbing plants, bringing nature into the interior space. The entrance balcony is a natural surveillance of the laneway and neighbouring public car park; it is a loosely programmed outdoor veranda borrowing the Japanese “Engawa” concept. 

The project has two core design values: (1) Sustainable design through tectonic expression and (2) Developing care in construction. 

(1) The material used in this project is based on its materiality and constructability by the owner builder - they are selected for their natural texture, patina and longevity. Passive design strategies using the enormous roof structure, trellis façade, and water retention are coupled with robust detail, as well as the heat exchanger, to create comfort. Most components are locally manufactured within 5 km of the site and utilise advanced CNC and robotics technology. PIR sheet is CNC milled as formwork to create the interior textured concrete, which was re-used as insulation for the roof. 

(2) Using advanced technology, the project brings intricacy to the construction process. Point cloud scanning of as-built information was used to inform the manufacturing data of the timber roof and concrete formwork as design feedback. The point cloud is used to align the concrete texture across the day joint. The free-form plywood roof with the exposed soffit is a collaboration with TGA Engineering. 

The Northcote House is the architect’s own home. It is tailored to the client's way of life – a home with a series of pocket-gathering spaces for groups of introverts. The brief also calls for a house that would give back to the City by addressing the interface with the street, a roof and a façade that would support greenery and local ecology. Within the small footprint, the design provides its inhabitants with a variety of spaces and experiences, from a compact kitchen dining space that utilises the local restaurant and eateries more than encourage home cooking to the double-storey snug, which is perfect for resting while enjoying the daylight entering from the skylights above; the front terrace which oversees the local neighbourhood offering secure surveillance; the rear private courtyard which includes an outdoor shower; and the rooftop terrace offers impressive views over neighbouring rooftops and tree canopies with Mount Macedon in the background. 

Photography: Tom Ross (https://tomross.xyz/)