house renovation collingwood
completed 2004

This renovation of a former corner hotel in Collingwood involved the complete renovation of the building, which primarily focuses on breaking down antiquated Victorian notions of spatial hierachy.

The project itself has been with our office over the course of several years, starting with substantial underpinning to the existing fabric. Once stabilised, we began working to reconfigure the floorplan, to change the very nature of how one entered and moved through the house. In this regard the ‘front door’ was relocated to Forest Street and placed centrally within this, the western façade. To add drama, an existing window at first floor level was cut down to ground to surgically create a fissure through which you now enter.

Both the materiality here, in rusted then sealed black steel, and the sense of verticality, have been maintained throughout the interior. The entry itself is bold, even severe and suited to its urban context. However despite their inherent ‘toughness’, the materials used have a tactile warmth and energy, with the height of the door and the ease of the pivot signalling the generousity of spirit within. Our brief in respect to this project concentrated on positive notions of light and space, privacy for reflection, tranquillity and dynamism, opposites and extremes but most importantly balance – to create a living environment to suit our clients' passion for life and to house their personal treasures.

Many specific directives in regard to storage of clothes, personal items, books and wine were handled, quietly – a place for everything, trying all the while to create a neutral yet not bland palette within which the clients' collection of artefacts, gathered over a lifetime of travel, could sit comfortably.

These artefacts, a strong part of the clients' identity as a couple, now fill the architecture, with one not overpowering the other.

project team
Sioux Clark
Tim O'Sullivan
Kim Roberts

builder
cameron mcalpine

structural engineer
bruce adams consultants

photographer