Bungalow 9 House

Locat­ed in Brunswick, the Bun­ga­low 9 House is a cus­tom design response to mod­ernise a clas­sic bun­ga­low style home to accom­mo­date the client’s brief for a hard-wear­ing home for a fam­i­ly of six care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of bud­get and sustainability. 

Adap­tive re-use was the first strat­e­gy employed to bal­ance the pro­gram­mat­ic require­ments for a fam­i­ly of four with the bud­get and sus­tain­abil­i­ty objec­tives. The clas­sic style archi­tec­ture was ful­ly re-addressed with a con­tem­po­rary nod whilst embrac­ing the tra­di­tion­al detail­ing, main­tain­ing dec­o­ra­tive trims and cor­nic­ing. This por­tion of the home worked well to cre­ate indi­vid­ual bed­rooms fos­ter­ing a sense of inti­ma­cy and warmth. 

The sin­gu­lar excep­tion was the mas­ter ensuite where a mod­ern inser­tion was devised to cre­ate an updat­ed ameni­ty float­ing with­in the Mas­ter Bed­room. The Ensuite has an ele­vat­ed mate­ri­als palette con­nect­ing with the detail­ing used in the mod­ern addi­tion, includ­ing a unique fea­ture stone basin.

As typ­i­cal in a Bun­ga­low House, the approach for a mod­ern exten­sion is focused on its access to light and cre­ation of open-planned liv­ing spaces with con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the garden. 

The pre­dom­i­nate archi­tec­tur­al lan­guage cre­at­ed for the Bun­ga­low 9 House, is a series of dark tim­ber blade walls that run north to south, improv­ing the aspect for the inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or spaces simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. This inter­ven­tion results in a suc­ces­sion of per­me­able walls, each with a unique pro­gram­mat­ic expe­ri­ence at the inter­sec­tion with the gar­den, ulti­mate­ly cre­at­ing a lay­er­ing of exter­nal and inter­nal spaces. In the open-plan kitchen and din­ing this opens to become an indoor/​outdoor din­ing expe­ri­ence. In oth­er areas it cre­ates nich­es for seat­ing, and out­looks for the study and bathroom.

Extend­ing from the blade walls to the bound­ary is a series of struc­tur­al steel mesh per­go­las allow­ing the gar­den to mature over time. With the growth, the inte­ri­or spaces and out­looks will also become more vibrant and will be con­stant­ly chang­ing with the sea­sons. The inter­sec­tion of land­scap­ing with the build­ing will great­ly con­tribute to the pas­sive per­for­mance in addi­tion to mak­ing dynam­ic spa­tial qualities.

Off­set­ting the dark tim­ber, con­crete floor­ing and bagged brick walls offer a lighter warmth and tex­ture to the dis­tinct­ly mod­ern kitchen and liv­ing spaces. The mate­ri­als selec­tion works toward ther­mal mass whilst pro­vid­ing hard-wear­ing sur­faces meet­ing the prac­ti­cal demands of a young fam­i­ly. The cen­tral kitchen bench and join­ery is made from local­ly sourced ash also adding to the over­all sustainability. 

Pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly, the lay­out pro­vides hard-work­ing spaces, often with mul­ti­ple func­tions to sup­port liv­ing and work-from-home for both par­ents includ­ing two sep­a­rate study spaces. One of the stud­ies is set away from the main mul­ti-use liv­ing space and its door is ful­ly inte­grat­ed into a join­ery wall to max­imise pri­va­cy and productivity.

Cre­at­ing a unique­ly mod­ern home for a styl­ish young fam­i­ly, the Bun­ga­low 9 House meets the mul­ti­fac­eted demands of liv­ing and work­ing in a sus­tain­able environment.