3x2 ≠ 3+3
Semi-detached dwelling
Sydney, Australia
panovscott
© 2014, panovscott Architects.
All rights are reserved. No part may be reproduced without permission.
The authors have endeavoured to contact all relevant copyright holders prior to publication. Should an error
have occurred please notify the authors so subsequent editions can be rectified.
ISBN 978-0-9924889-3-2
Photographs by Brett Boardman and panovscott
Typeset in Twentieth Century, which was designed by Sol Hess in 1937.
For further information please visit panovscott.com.au
This project is the renovation of a house, one of two semi-detached single storey dwellings
located in Sydney’s densely inhabited inner west. Broadly speaking it is about the making of
a new whole by retention of one half of a structure and reconfiguration of the other.
The environ is an increasingly gentrified subdivision originating around 1880 and
characterised by predominantly narrow east west orientated housing parcels fronting a large
public park. The short street frontage holds a small garden and beyond that the historically
significant painted brick façade is of humble but pleasing proportion. Slightly elevated
from the street the long site slopes gently upwards to the rear lane, with a central garden
contained to the west by a utilitarian double garage built in the 1990’s. Beyond the garage
and wide lane the incline continues up to the attractive but motley treed grounds of a local
high school.
This pattern of habitation is loosely replicated in the surrounding dwellings with some
variation. The attached dwelling to the south mirrors closely the arrangement of the existing
house, whilst the property to the north, sharing the other long boundary, accommodates two
stacked single storey units with living spaces opening to the central garden or a large raised
terrace, respectively.
Itinerary
Approach to the house remains via the formal front garden up three generous steps and
onto a narrow porch below a low curved corrugated roof. A small centrally placed casement
window and offset front door punctuate the painted brick elevation. Within, the front rooms
have been retained with minimal intervention allowing the continued manner of dwelling.
Through the door adjusting eyes encounter the darkened space of a formal sitting or
reception room with a symmetrically located fireplace on the southern wall. From this slightly
elevated vantage a vista can be enjoyed back across the street to the magnificent fig trees
in the park. In the opposite direction, on axis with the front door, a long hall leads past two
bedrooms. The high ceilings, small windows and wonderfully lean vertical timber construction
establish the character typical of a Sydney terrace. Cool in both summer and winter and dark
even on the brightest of days, these spaces offer the initial experience of homecoming and
become a counterpoint for the character of the rear addition.
At the end of the existing hall a small opening twists to the sky bringing gentle light through
the upper level and into the centre of the long plan. The light washes down a 45 degree
splayed plywood panel. Visible from the dark front rooms and immediately upon entry, it
announces the differing quality of the spaces ahead. Moving towards this quiet light, the thin
sliver of a brighter room beyond gradually widens with the shifting perspective. Shunted off
the previous axial alignment, and past a discreet bathroom, the great communal room of the
house is revealed. Light filled, this is a combined kitchen and dining space of slightly smaller
area than the lean-to it replaces. Here the elegant vertical proportions and lean timber
construction techniques of the front part of the house are reinterpreted.
Continuing the homecoming journey the room increases to six metres in height reaching
upwards at its far end. The number and size of windows also increase gradually to this point
allowing the internal space to expand horizontally as well as vertically and for the light levels
to approach that of the external environment.
Turning 180 degrees and up a narrow stair concealed behind a ply lined wall, the level
above contains a master bedroom and ensuite, with a tiny window looking back across the
roof to the park. This moment completes the journey within to the most private realm of the
house.
At the Edge
Below, the specific nature of the great room is a reaction to our clients’ considered brief.
Cognisant of size and budget, we eschewed the traditional dedicated lounging space and
instead developed opportunities for individual relaxation at the edges of the communal
kitchen and dining spaces. This enabled a reduced plan area and, via the dual purposing
of some prosaic architectural elements, some wonderfully idiosyncratic liminal living spaces
to evolve. For instance, a small alcove and window at the eastern edge of the room offers
a subdued light quality and intimate outlook to a tiny gravel court; at the western edge of
the larger room the elongated concrete stair landing and adjacent wide barn door offers
a large, robust and light strewn play platform; the plinth beside the stair is made for the
display of a plant or sculpture but also rises to arse height enabling a temporary perch; the
low toy storage box at the rear threshold allows space for one to recline in the north-eastern
sun poised between inside and out, or aligned perhaps four could sit facing inside in winter,
or out during an early evening summer bbq.
The encouraged indeterminate use of individual architectural elements nearing the rear
façade is reinforced by the repeated furcation of movement. On entry the singular dedicated
space of the hall defines a particular mode of movement. At the end of the hall, the hinge
point between the old and new, the ambulatory opportunities double as split by the kitchen
bench allowing members of the family to comfortably traverse or linger in the space. This
splitting happens again at the rear façade where three different modes of opening - a tall
narrow door, a trifold window and large casement panel - offer multiple modes of movement
through the threshold to the garden with its ample opportunities for habitation.
The public realm
If above the more private itinerary ends in the master bedroom, it is here, in the garden,
that the public spaces of the house culminate. A narrow space of quite generous length is
bounded by two side fences up to a height of 1.8m and truncated by the rear wall of the
garage. Two mature trees, a Pepper to the north and Thornless Honey Locust to the south,
draw the eye upward. And it is there, above the fence-line, that the individual garden
spaces join to form a larger shared zone comprising a mottled patchwork of open air spaces
punctuated occasionally by mature trees of diverse and often surprising species.
In sites of extreme width such as this a tacit understanding regarding privacy arises between
neighbours. Given the circumstance, lives can be nothing other than noticed and modes of
existence not forced upon others, but instead constantly negotiated by those affected.
Monumentality
The observation of this idiosyncratic communal space can be seen to some effect in the
treatment of the renovation’s garden façade. Seen frontally the elevation is striking in its
formality. The size, materiality and composition of windows and wall do not adhere to any
overt contextual pattern. Instead a grid of six squares, three high, and two metres by two in
dimension, order the façade. Given the context and our clients’ informal lifestyle the resultant
character is counterintuitive. In this respect the elevation is designed not as a result of the
external expression of an internal arrangement of spaces, but to relate principally to the
garden. In this we are continuing our interest in buildings such as Alberti’s Sant’Andrea in
Mantova that engage in a deliberate manipulation of proportion and scale to establish the
preferential treatment of the public façade over the private.
This allows the house to engage not just with the immediate space of the narrow garden but
the joined space above, and further, to the treed ridge beyond. Acknowledging this tripartite
opportunity the façade establishes a datum commensurate with the height of the garden
fences. At ground level it is possible for the façade to open entirely, creating an immediate
connection to the garden, or for individual doors and windows to be opened and closed
depending on the family’s lifestyle and the external climatic conditions. Above, the large
panes of fixed glass and solid wall alternate, establishing directional views in and out of the
building. Due to the placement of these windows the views are not axial, instead offering
engagement with the shared open air space and private realms beyond.
Performance
The environmental performance of the house results from a number of unobtrusive strategies
including generous solar penetration, utilisation of exposed thermal mass for climatic
stabilisation, and encouraged cross ventilation via a thermal chimney to gently move air
from the cooler eastern part of the house and exhaust hot air up and out through high level
northwestern louvres. If needed, these passive strategies may be augmented by localised
gas heating. The tiny literal footprint of the building is echoed by its larger unseen ecological
one. Energy consumption is minimised, existing materials are reused in construction and,
augmented by the new, all decay slowly in an elegant manner reducing the likelihood of
maintenance or premature modification.
As designers our mandate required the systematic removal of any kind of material and
spatial excess. In collaboration with our wonderful clients, this rigorous process resulted
not in spaces of austere minimalism but those enriched by surprising material and spatial
juxtapositions. This engagement with the refreshingly direct solution to a given problem
reminds us of the way our grandparents built their rudimentary structures. Perhaps most
succinctly described as with pride and neat timber joints.
Exposed laminated veneer lumber, made from small plantation pine pieces that minimise
waste from tree to beam, combined with plywood, another laminated timber material
dominate the limited internal material palette. The manner in which these materials are
combined echoes the wonderful leanness of the single skin cedar bedroom walls in the
original part of the house. On occasion, environmental separation dictates that a cavity wall
system is employed and so the more traditional plasterboard clad stud wall is utilised. Where
external conditions require materials of greater decay resistance, western red cedar crafted
lining, doors and windows were used. Collapsing the separation between finish and structure
allowed the majority of the construction to occur onsite by skilled carpenters. The resultant
build was cost effective, reactive to site and program fluctuations, and minimised waste.
Soft and lean
The aspiration for this project was large, extremes of cost, time and size were matched by
those of trust, curiosity and sophistication in our conversations with client, builder and council.
As a result the collective offering is soft and lean; a wonderful place to live.
Parts of a whole
In this house the predominant external material is western red cedar - solid window and
door frames and vertical lining board walls. As the material fades to grey the texture will
equalise with the complementary zincalume metal, unfinished Exotec compressed fibre cement
cladding panels and concrete plinth. These materials, and this gradual unification of the
external appearance of the building, are framed by the above architectural ideas.
Internally similar ideas frame our decision to utilise Kauri pine marine grade plywood from
Austral Plywoods. This material, with a sealer from Porters Paints, was crafted on site to form
the downstairs ceiling/upstairs floor, stairs and wall panels. The kitchen and upstairs robe
are also fronted in this material. Cupboard and door fronts have Blum tip-on push latches or
concealed finger pulls. This material, combined with the exposed laminated veneer lumber
structure, enabled a spare but comfortable interior. We love the atmospheric warmth of the
space as the light enters through the large windows and in reflecting off the pine undergoes
a subtle chromatic shift, this light is then further reflected into the interior by the Dulux White
on White painted plasterboard walls and upper level ceiling.
The same colour in a satin finish coats the few doors in the house. These are not hinged but
extend from floor to ceiling and pivot on minimal Dorma hardware allowing us to remove
the overhead jamb. In this way both floor and ceiling are continuous from room to room and
when held in the open position by a magnetic or ball catch the doors tend to meld with the
adjacent wall.
The wet areas are lined, floor and wall, with 100mm square Waringa UK Satin White
Johnson tiles. The toilets are Vizzini Argento with a white pushplate fronting the concealed
cistern. The tapware is all Methven Minimalist with a chrome finish.
The heart of the kitchen (and so house) is an island bench with a fabricated stainless steel
benchtop including a generous sink and a beautifully fine 5mm welded edge all round. All
joinery hardware is Blum. The oven and cooktop are Ilve, the dishwasher is Smeg behind a
plywood panel and the microwave and fridge integrated into the new from the old.
We like to conceal the source and bounce artificial light off a ceiling, wall, or low down on
the floor. This is not always appropriate but we work hard to keep the ceiling as sparse as
possible, a large reflector of light. Here we sparingly use the refined Audrey Tilt downlight
by Boaz, NUD pendants with vintage shades found on our clients’ adventures, and externally
a Nordlux Elements 11 wall light.
It is a delight that the home has been inhabited with such grace and wit. In the kitchen
Winston greets, keen as always for victory. Above, the double angel is in fact Gods Monsters
by Joshua Webb. On the opposite wall Bore Water Study by Jackson Eaton makes a little
Calder triumvirate with the more abstract and laughing clown mobiles. This curatorial
intelligence permeates all and is again evident in the dining space furnishings. The table is
round and timber, the chairs Thonet Bentwood and Eames Plastic Side; for the two little ones
the equally iconic Stokke Tripp Trapp complete the collection.
Critique
by David Welsh
Atelier Bow-Wow founding partner Yoshiharu Tsukamoto believes architecture can create
better relationships between people. It is a solid tenet for anyone approaching a new
building project, and of course there are myriad ways in which an architect can set about
achieving this goal – one of which is demonstrated in the design of Three by Two House.
It is all brought about with delightful ease: using a restrained, robust palette of pine, ply,
plasterboard and concrete, the thoughtful detailing of these elements, along with the
kitchen, makes the space feel generous and comfortable, belying the small floor plate of the
room.
In approaching the commission, panovscott looked for ways to unlock the brief and ground
it in the context they were working within. In breaking the project down they began to see
it, in broad terms, as being about the making of a new whole through the retention of one
half of a structure and the reconfiguration of the other. While the existing relationship
between the house and the street was to remain, the opposite end of the house had no such
constraints.
How you experience the Great Room begins with a carefully calibrated approach through
the existing sections of the house. As you move from the front door to the end of the existing
hallway space, your eye is caught by light washing down a splayed plywood panel. Splayed
walls are often found at the end of terrace hallways, holding the hearth of a coal brazier
and mantle and signifying your arrival at the main living space. Here, though, it hosts a
shard of light from a twisting lightwell above. Beyond the splay sit the guts of the kitchen.
And in the kitchen the stairs to the private main bedroom space are also hidden.
The architects sought to deliberately eschew any contextual pattern that might have
generated a design response. Instead, they set about exploring a formal elevational
response based on the idea of a grid of six two-by-two-metre squares. This allowed them
to come up with a design that was not just an external expression of the interior but also a
deliberate response to the garden.
The chequerboard arrangement of the garden facade acts like a collecting plate that
records both the silhouettes and the reflections of the surrounding trees. This first layer
of light is captured by the alternating material squares of Western red cedar solids and
glazed panels. Through the garden facade the arrangement of the house can be seen.
The internal workings of the house are set back from the facade, within what the architects
call the Great Room. The nature of the Great Room evolved in response to the clients’
considered brief.
As with many projects, size and budget were an issue. Therefore the traditional dedicated
lounge space was eschewed, the architects instead employing a strategy of “occupying the
edges.” Window alcoves, a concrete element that is part stair, part plinth to perch on, and
sill-height storage boxes all act as catalysts for people to engage with the garden and
each other.
The main bedroom sits almost like a loft above the Great Room. It is set back from the rear
facade to enable the double-height space of the Great Room below. From here the view of
the trees is delightful, seen through the lens of the rear garden facade. Setting the edge of
the bedroom back from the facade also allows the space to remain quite private – even with
the big pane of glass that allows the view across to the trees.
It was about fifteen minutes into my visit when I realized that I wasn’t being shown through
the house; I was being shown around it. Often with a terrace renovation it can become a
procession of one room stacked behind another, and then sometimes some more rooms
stacked on top. Here, I was being shifted and turned by subtle architectural variations, which
made the spaces feel generous and engaging.
Andrew and Anita describe the project as one imbued with “trust, curiosity and
sophistication.” The house, generated from a formal architectural response, has become a
“collective offering that is soft and lean; a wonderful place to live.”
If better relationships between people can really be facilitated through architecture, then
this house has the potential to do just that.
Cuttings
Cuttings
1. Manifesting desire
2. The enigmatic
In the 1930’s our son’s great, great grandfather built a house just outside of Old Junee on
the vast agricultural plain stretching across south central NSW and down into Victoria. Long
demolished, we know that house from the few little black and white photographs secreted in
old family albums. There are some prints of the house just after it was complete looking like
that of Stanley and Martha in John Hillcoat and Nick Cave’s The Proposition, a small structure,
alien on the great dusty horizon in each of the photographs, no mater how much house fills
the frame. Later images show a phalanx of great ghost gums grown to tower over the house,
which in turn has itself grown in a less ordered but as predictable manner, with additional
rooms, outbuildings, gardens and sheds anchoring that earlier, precarious structure.
The people stare, almost invariably, stare out at us from the turn of the last century in Walker
Evans’ American Photographs. We love those images because of that look. Interestingly even
his complementary compositions of frontally framed anthropomorphised buildings share
aspects of that gaze.
However it is not the amazing transformation of that home and its environment that so
captivated us in looking at those tiny vignettes. Instead it is the house itself, its particular
materiality - at first glance it seemed a solid stone settler homestead of lean but pleasing
proportion. On closer investigation the stone reveals itself to be a chimera, simply painted
onto horizontal timber boards.
On first encountering the photos we were students and coming as such from an education
that in essence, and largely extent, venerated the honestly constructed vernacular shed, this
ancestral folly was shameful. It was only later, when our youthful arrogance tempered, that
we began to feel some affection for the act, to understand a building as emblematic of a
specific cultural aspiration and not merely subservient to the prevailing aesthetic decorum.
Later still we learned of the triglyph. Located in the entablature of ancient Greek, and later
Roman temples, these decorative carvings are the stone representation of the end of timber
roof beams utilised in more primitive structures. As well as providing a regular compositional
element in the façade, the triglyph was utilised by the ancients to connote the earliest
structures, the origins of architecture, and so the origins of their culture.
It is difficult for us to ascertain what those people were thinking at the moment a strange
man came to take away their photograph. And it is that very uncertainty which enables a
particular photograph to not be simply of a sharecropper’s wife in Alabama in 1938 but
about something greater. The quiet defiance, resignation, squalor and beauty are poised in
a particular balance that allow us as observers to determine a given meaning for the image.
As such we are drawn back time and again to the images, that particular image. Each time
different streams of thought and interpretations flow, often dependent more on our own
particular mood than that of the image, reflecting as it does more us than it.
This kind of enigmatic object holds great resonance for us in determining the nature of our
own manner of making. The responsibility of architecture holds that we seek in the first
instance an object that is designed to elegantly fit a narrowly defined purpose. Over time we
have recognised that those purposes tend to be fleeting and so an object which satisfies that
immediate function must also be able to accommodate multiple future functions.
There is then that tension in all great works of architecture between its commissioned utility
and the moment it will be torn asunder from immediate pragmatic concerns and exist simply
as a thing made.
In our experience of this artful balance, it is the poets who know the power of the enigmatic
the best, leveraging language, whose essential purpose is in accurately defining common
meaning, to enable multiple specific plausible interpretations. As Gertrude Stein so succinctly
said, a rose is a rose is a rose.
Cuttings
Cuttings
3. Inadvertent harm
4. Rule based form
Iatrogenics is a term from the ancient Greek meaning harm brought forth from the healer
and has long been an integral part of the ethics of medical intervention. Similar ethical
consideration is evident in the Hippocratic Oath and the Latin term primum non nocere, which
translates as first do no harm.
Though developed long ago due to the immediate nature of causality in the medical field,
it has taken until relatively recently for science to implement similar standards. The brilliant
and courageous Sir Joseph Rotblat (the only scientist to have resigned from the Manhattan
Project) raised the spectre of a Hippocratic oath for scientists in his 1995 Nobel Peace Prize
acceptance speech. Though it was not until seven years ago that the UK Chief Scientist
David King established a universal code of ethics for scientists. Similar in structure to the
Hippocratic, the code is succinct and worthy of reproduction:
Act with skill and care in all scientific work. Maintain up to date skills and assist their
development in others.
Take steps to prevent corrupt practices and professional misconduct. Declare conflicts of
interest.
Be alert to the ways in which research derives from and affects the work of other people,
and respect the rights and reputations of others.
Ensure that your work is lawful and justified.
Minimize and justify any adverse effect your work may have on people, animals and the
natural environment.
Seek to discuss the issues that science raises for society. Listen to the aspirations and
concerns of others.
Do not knowingly mislead, or allow others to be misled, about scientific matters. Present and
review scientific evidence, theory or interpretation honestly and accurately.
Applying this code to the building industry we see around us is an enlightening experience.
Despite complex regulatory frameworks, evidence suggests that ethical standards cannot be
mandated in the industry but must instead arise from an individual’s own sense of morality.
How then do we collectively build our cities, construct our suburbs and preserve our cultural
heritage in a responsible manner? So often we find ourselves working against large scale
decision making processes which are seemingly based solely on expediency. More often
than we would like, we have cause to remember the politician’s syllogism expounded by Sir
Humphrey in the brilliantly sardonic late 80’s tv show Yes, Prime Minister:
We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore, we must do this.
Within this context our own guiding principle to first make sure we do no harm becomes more
and more meaningful. We do so with the knowledge that from that momentary restrictive
foundation the next steps can follow in all of their exciting multiplicity.
We’ve always been enamoured by Le Corbusier’s design for the Museum of unlimited
extension. To us it is a proposition of immense pragmatic clarity that seems more of our
time than that of 1939. Refreshingly eschewing the recent popular architectural image of
a stoic form, complete and imutable, it impresses a design which operates principally as a
framework to allow the variation of its nature over time.
From Corbusier’s drawings the design is a single corridor for the viewing of art elevated
above the ground, spiraling in a rectilinear manner outwards from a central entrance below.
As the name suggests the corridor can be simply extended to expand the museum.
We wonder if... Unfortunately it was decades after those first sketches, in 1956, that the first
three spirals of the Museum were eventually constructed on a site by the river in Ahmedabad,
and opened by the reigning powers with much pomp. In the accompanying publications the
images show a building of 18 spirals with sections removed to allow light and air to flood
the interior. The accompanying text points out these openings would also allow for a number
of courtyards so that museum goers could enjoy a moment of respite before rejoining the
cultural path.
From those humble beginnings the museum grew in reputation, with more and more visitors
attracted to one of Corbusier’s most innovative works. Within years commensurate funding
was allocated by various governments and India’s burgeoning society of philanthropists,
which enabled the collection to grow. 12 years after the opening, the Board of Directors
determined it was time to make the first expansion. They approached Le Corbusier’s
daughter who, following her father’s untimely death whilst swimming in the Med, had taken
the reigns of the newly named Atelier Les Corbusier. Good friends with Aldo van Eyck and
instrumental in the formulation of the Structuralists’ manifesto, La Corbusier recognised the
humanitarian possibilities imbued within her father’s building framework and so began to
explore notions that Mandelbrot would later define as self-affine rather than self-similar
accumulatory systems. Over years and with additional spirals of varying nature added to
the building Corbusier’s ideas began to gain traction within the profession and so enter the
larger discourse of architecture.
In the pragmatic Dutch tradition it was John Habraken who first articulated the notion
of a framework to enable community engagement in the construction process with his
Supports, an Alternative to Mass Housing. It took another 30 years before West 8’s
Scheepstimmermanstraat development in Amsterdam joined Les Corbusier’s museum as a
well-regarded building framed by these ideas. In the following decade, the notion of a
Teilkunstwerk spread widely with Alejandro Aravena’s Elemental Housing projects most
persuasively pursuing the notion in the new millennium.
All the while the Museum by the river’s looping spirals accumulated. With the grand lady of
architecture working on the building to this day, she jokingly refers to it as an inversion of
Wilde’s story with herself being the picture secreted in the attic.
...3×2 House is an inspiring example of architectural creativity and ingenuity in the face of
challenging constraints – a reminder that “big moment” joyous architecture is achievable
despite, or even in response to, small, exigent budgets.
2014 AIA NSW Jury Citation