Florence Residence

Additions and Alterations | 910m² | completed 2017 | photographed by Scott Horsburgh

Florence Residence was originally a 1965 house built to accommodate a large family, however was designed with restrictions. There were spaces in the original design that limited the clients way of life. Spaces internally had no relationship to one another. Kitchen and living spaces were seperated from one another, bedrooms were located far apart. The house itself sat eschewed from the site boundaries with no relationship to the need of natural ventilation and natural sunlight.

When the clients took over the property, the brief was to clearly open the spaces up, with a usable kitchen, living, and dining space for them and their two teens. During the design, we were able to eliminate the unnecessary, and create more opportunity adding another guest bedroom for their parents interstate a seperate study, lounge area, and scullery. Each space maintained a connection to the landscape around the built envelope. The entrance was pronounced through the expression of the canopy roof, determining a fixed entry point, a missing component in the original build. Although unrecognisable with its original aestethic, we maintained the facebrick as a key material to tie the house together with a small nod to the 1960s.