While many architects thrive on the thrill and prestige of starting from scratch, there are often times when only reconstruction will do. This refined rebuild involved the wholesale overhaul of a 19th-century weatherboard house, located close to the centre of Sydney. Originally a worker’s cottage, the Lilyfield House was bought by a family that needed to maximise the available space without settling for an ersatz addition that simply mimicked the original architecture.
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Nobbs Radford Architects stepped in with a design for a subtle modern extension, drawing inspiration from the humble original cottage, with its flanks clad in narrow wooden weatherboards, while still managing to convey a functional, standalone character. From the street, the new addition presents a striking geometric counterpart to the traditional pitched roof profile of the original house, with walls covered in industrial gauge steel and a monopitch roof that rises to a spiky peak.
Intended to evoke the ad-hoc add-on spirit embodied by decades of extensions and lean-tos, the new space practically doubles the cottage’s floor area, creating a lofty open plan living space adjoining a new kitchen and dining room, while that steep roof contains a cosy children’s loft space tucked in the eaves. There’s also space for a utility space and bathroom area, plus a little ‘study nook’ overlooking the garden.
Alison Nobbs and Sean Radford started their studio in 2002. Since then they’ve carved an enviable niche in extending and refurbishing the existing suburban architecture of Sydney, old and new. The Lilyfield House embodies their approach: compact, modest and beautifully refined.
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