Hawthorn Gable House

Sit­ting with­in a prized her­itage estate, Hawthorn Gable House is a sen­si­tive con­tem­po­rary response for a young fam­i­ly. By bor­row­ing tra­di­tion­al mate­ri­als and forms, and adapt­ing them to a mod­ern lan­guage, the home con­tains a rich­ness in expres­sion along­side a sim­plic­i­ty of lay­out, mak­ing for a plea­sur­able home to inhabit.

The brief was sim­ple — to deliv­er a func­tion­al, beau­ti­ful, con­tem­po­rary fam­i­ly home that hon­oured the his­to­ry of the old inter­war home, whilst being finan­cial­ly efficient. 

Through the care­ful reten­tion of the exist­ing floor plan, roof­ing tiles, gable forms, small brick garage, sim­ple dec­o­ra­tive tim­ber work and tex­tured ren­ders typ­i­fy the homes in this his­toric estate, and forms the lan­guage for this mod­ern adaptation. 

Main­tain­ing the tra­di­tion­al small­er room lay­out pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial and sus­tain­able ben­e­fits, whilst cre­at­ing a func­tion­al solu­tion for hous­ing 3 young chil­dren. Sub­tle links are cre­at­ed ver­ti­cal­ly, hor­i­zon­tal­ly and to sur­round­ing land­scape, estab­lish­ing con­nec­tion and sur­veil­lance, whilst min­imis­ing impact on each other. 

To meet the brief for ​‘light filled, whilst retain­ing warmth and tex­ture’, a top lit, dou­ble height entry void was carved from the home­’s cen­tre, with raked plas­ter and tim­ber screens fil­ter­ing light.

The orig­i­nal gabled garage is retained and re-pur­posed as kitchen, pro­vid­ing impor­tant links to the his­tor­i­cal form and lay­out of these homes.

A dis­tinct­ly mod­ern addi­tion is cre­at­ed at the rear of the house, pro­vid­ing open liv­ing spaces for the fam­i­ly. The geom­e­try of the roofline as well as the ceram­ic glazed mate­ri­al­i­ty are a ref­er­ence to the slop­ing tile roof of the orig­i­nal build­ing. The clas­sic arch detail­ing around the entry door is mir­rored in a mod­ern coun­ter­part where the glazed open­ing is framed by and arched cut-out. 

Whilst exter­nal­ly the home presents dif­fer­ent­ly from front to back, the tran­si­tion of inter­nal lan­guage from tra­di­tion­al to con­tem­po­rary is han­dled as a kind of over­lap­ping and inter­twin­ing, mak­ing the addi­tion and tra­di­tion­al home dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate, allow­ing for the rich­ness of both to be evident.