2021 North Perth House

Architecture Team: Simon Pendal and Valerie Schönjahn

Builder - Element Builders, Strustural - Forth Consulting, Landscape - Christina Nicholson, Estimator - Rebecca Hunn, Photographer - Traianos Pakioufakis

2023 AIA National Commendation For Residential Architecture - Houses (Alterations and Additions)

2023 AIA Award For Residential Architecture - Houses (Alterations and Additions)

2023 Houses Awards, National Commendation, House Alteration and Addition under 200 m²

We think of this project as a collection of distinctive rooms gathered under a large, singular roof.

One room is cavernous and raw, like a cave, its openings primitive, simple and unadorned allowing garden views to feel amplified in their sharpness. This room gains light from above which makes it feel subterranean and massive.

The next room is low, domestic and contains a window seat. Subtle surface embellishments - rolled edges and darkened creases (rendered in a single grey-green paint) - produces a soft decorative quality through shadow. We hope it may have the quality of a Vilhelm Hammershøi painting.

The final room is small in area but tall and oddly shaped like a simple hut or a tent. It is painted in a deep, intense grey-blue. It addresses a small and secretive courtyard garden.

All these rooms are wrapped by a verandah of a raw, simple materials which will amplify changes in light and the qualities of the weather. The outside will age gracefully. Along this verandah a long external timber ledge will be the perfect place for potted plants and sitting in the half-shade.