An interior renovation of an existing townhouse in North Perth uses colour and ‘stages’ to celebrate daily life.

Architectural Team: Simon Pendal, Builder: Peter Bodeker Construction, Structural: Atelier JV, Estimator: Ron Jessett

Photographer: Roberth Frith

2017 AIA The Peter Overman Award For Residential Architecture - Houses (Alterations and Additions)

2018 Winner of National Dulux Colour Awards - Multi Residential Interior2018

National Houses Awards - Commendation - Apartment or Unit

Ten years after opening the practice we had built a series of houses anchored by limewashed plywood rooms with sharply delineated adjunct spaces.  These interiors sought immersion, transforming Perth’s searing white light into the kinder hues associated with morning or afternoon.  While being a productive testing ground, this repetition risked being formulaic.  The North Perth Townhouse’s economics enforced a shift in approach. The townhouse, an unremarkable mix of dark, warren-like rooms was located within a 90’s reproduction Georgian Mews. 

My Spatial History was mapped in the years prior and now consciously used.  Memories of kitchen-rooms (Grandparent’s house), rooms of singular tone (a family dining room long forgotten), and staged moments of rarefication (familiar religious spaces) were deployed.

Designing through interior physical models and photoshop layers over site photographs, singular colour was used as a mask.  This allowed the unification of disparate surfaces and faux detailing, making spaces in relief as though cast.  Paint became a spatial device of extreme economy.  Parts or whole rooms became life-stages; rarefied moments where people, objects and events were objectified. 

An emerald-green kitchen with white corner-niche allowed twin ‘stagings’ in a single room.  The kitchen’s central role was reinforced using a thick frieze designed for the display of Wedgwood plates (the client later preferred emptiness).  A Prussian blue sitting room suspends people and things then meets a remodelled all-white stair creating a surface tension between, amplifying the act of ascent or descent.  All-white bedrooms with diaphanous curtains eliminated shadow and felt cloud-like.  Faux period details were occasionally cut flush with wall surfaces to express their end-on profile, exaggerating relief.  Sharp transitions charge movement between rooms creating a sequenced interior.