When two artists and an architect converge, ideas inevitably multiply. In this case, architect Virginia Wong See's collaboration with her clients - a photographer and a painter - began as a minor kitchen revamp. By the end of the job, the work and living spaces had been reconfigured, a slice of courtyard had been introduced and light and the elements had been brought into the heart of the house.
"The brief started small and grew," says Wong See. "[It] was very different to what we ended up doing." Wong See set her clients on course early in the piece. "One of the first questions I asked was, 'What is the long-term plan for the house?' "
The owners had lived in this terrace house in Paddington for 20 years and did indeed have a plan. They had one studio space but needed another. During creative brainstorming with Wong See, the pair came up with the idea of putting all their living space on the ground floor and their dual studios on the first level. This freed up the whole plan, says Wong See.
The new brief was to reconfigure the terrace's floor plan, and so the work evolved from a comparatively simple alteration to creating a new kitchen opening onto a courtyard, a new ground-floor bathroom with a skylight and, at the rear of the site, a new laundry and bedroom.
"We didn't touch the front two rooms of the house," says Wong See, who works with her partner Hamish Holley as builder. (He is also a trained architect.) "These rooms had been renovated and were working well as living and dining spaces with a wall of bookshelves serving to divide the two rooms. The lime-washed maple of the bookshelves did set the tone for the joinery in the new part of the house, though.
"Overall, the big focus was on getting light into the house. Typical of terrace-house layouts, the [pre-existing] kitchen had a window onto a side passage. So we decided to take advantage of the fact that we had this side passageway and turn it into a courtyard."
A new galley kitchen was installed and the side wall onto the alleyway replaced with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors. The outdoor space was then decked with timber.
From the clients' point of view, it transformed the house, making the elements and outside events a far greater part of their lives, both during the night and day.
"At night you actually see the track of the stars," the photographer says. "You see the Southern Cross make its way across this little slice of sky. Then during the day, even though it is an enclosed space, there is a feeling of the weather, the clouds moving across the sky, the currawongs. Sometimes you'll be sitting out there and you'll feel the shadows of the birds pass over you."
"It was just a mossy damp place," her husband adds. "In 20 years, we probably spent five minutes out there. Now it is really a living space."
"It really is the heart of the house," says Wong See. "They eat out there most of the time and they entertain out there a lot, too."
The new courtyard has also become an extension of an artist's studio, where a custom-made copper laundry tub is used in the afternoon to wash out brushes - and in the morning for a shave.
Light is a continuing theme in other parts of the new work. As well as introducing external light directly via the courtyard and a skylight in the bathroom, Wong See has used translucent glass on doors, windows on joinery.
"We've got a series of light boxes which occur above all the joinery in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom," she says. "The sliding doors [used for economy of space] are also translucent glass so they create light boxes, too."
Materials are comparatively simple, but stylish. The laundry tub, guttering and downpipes are copper. Doors and windows are aluminium-framed with clear or translucent glass and walls are acoustically insulated fibre cement with plasterboard internally. "Masonry would have meant losing space internally" Wong See explains.
Joinery is also precise to keep spaces streamlined. For example, the bedroom has a wall of limewashed maple built-ins on one side and a chic, glass-enclosed bookcase surrounding the bed on the other. There are also integrated bedside tables.
"The bedroom has become a more of a public space because it is in a more prominent position," says Wong See. "But it is really like an additional living area. They have put a sound system in there, so one person could go and read and listen to music. It has a lot of flexibility for a small space. Also, if they ever did sell, you could remove the bed and put a desk in there - and it would work equally well as a study or library."
But the owners have no intention of leaving. They are working productively in their two studios and living happily on the ground floor of their terrace with birds during the day and stars at night.
Author: Jane Burton Taylor
Date: October 30, 2003
Photographs: Quentin Jones
Plans adapted by Robert Parkinson