The project is informed by the playful houses that feature in movies by French director Jacques Tati, according to studio director Adam Haddow wanted to lean on his university thesis project that investigated stretching and manipulating space through film. 19 Waterloo Street features a patchwork-like facade made from reclaimed materials and broken bricks.
The house increased the programmatic potential through multiple uses by making better use of the entire site, a new multi-story dwelling that provides a total internal area of 69 square meters. The staircase is the piece around which the program of served or in-service spaces orbits. The service spaces are short with 2.1m ceilings – storage, kitchen, robe, and ensuite, while the served spaces are grand with 3.6m ceilings – study, living, and bedroom.
Programmatic diversity, density, and opportunity have been increased while a once-blank streetscape has been revitalized. Ultimately the project is about sustainability, doing more with less, reusing a site, reusing materials and better using an existing well-connected place.
Project description by SJB
19 Waterloo Street is buried amongst the chaos of warehouses and terraces that once served Sydney’s rag trade. A corner terrace with decades of architectural detritus had engulfed the site with a never-ending cascade of additions and lean-tos with the odd weed surviving between the cracks of the concrete path. As a butcher, a grocer, a window workshop, a hatter, and finally a design studio, each with the attached rooms above, the original building had had a checkered past.
Our intent was to deliver a mixed-use house, breaking up the site to deliver more. Our ambition: a shop, a self-contained flat, and a home. Three uses out of one.
The new addition at the rear of the site is accommodated on just 30 sqm and has a total internal area of 69 sqm. Using a split section, the stair is the pinwheel around which the house moves. The dwelling is divided into spaces that are served or in service. The service spaces are short with 2.1m ceilings – storage, kitchen, robe, and ensuite, while the served spaces are grand with 3.6m ceilings – study, living, and bedroom. With a maximum depth of 3.3 meters, light and ventilation are at your fingertips, always connecting you to the energy of the day while lending the house a strong sense of urbanity – you are living in the city.
19 Waterloo Street by SJB. Photograph by Anson Smart.
Externally the house is playful and textured – riffing the motives and materiality of the suburb that surrounds it. A little like a house from a Jacques Tati film, the façade feels alive with personality. Reclaimed bricks form the canvas, discarded broken ones reflect the historic sandstone base of the surrounding streets and are cut and folded to hide openings and protect views, while the upper bricks shift in scale to frame windows and support planting.
During the making of the house artists were commissioned to present a generous edge. The front gate is a cast bronze sculpture by Mika Utzon-Popov, and an all-enveloping landscape painting by Nicholas Harding in the living room is able to be viewed from the street.
