A Considered Weaving – Alexandria House by Andrew Burns Architecture

Taking cues from its richly layered context, Alexandria House emerges as a contemporary interpretation of the terrace house typology. Andrew Burns Architecture combines elements from the past with a refreshing and modern understanding of place to create a home anchored within its surroundings.

Nestled into the dense urban fabric of Sydney’s Alexandria, the same-named house is a crisp and considered contemporary iteration of the many terrace homes that populate the surrounding streets and are icons of Sydney. Sandwiched between two eras, the home sits between a traditional terrace to the south and a more recent courtyard terrace home to the north. In the finding of an identity for the site and carving its own personality amongst the many similarities, Alexandria House draws from its neighbours while curating its own considered resolve connected through a respectful reference to scale and a clean, enduring approach to materiality and light.

Connected but subtly separated, the two-way fireplace acts as a key gesture that defines the two spaces, without the need for traditional vertical dividing elements for to define a separation.

Built by Macbuilt Homes, Alexandria House centres around its own generous internal atrium that allows natural light deep into the internal zones. By taking lessons from the traditional terrace – lessons of long and linear rooms, a rigid formality and lack of access to light, the new proposal acts as a considered offering to mediate issues through a resolved approach. True to the terrace origins, a similar matched understanding and appreciation of scale and proportion allow the home to breathe and stand as its own entity, embedded in place, while fittingly appropriate. With a more structured formality kept and reinterpreted throughout, this then opens to the familiar shared kitchen and dining space, with a separate, more intimate living space. Connected but subtly separated, the two-way fireplace acts as a key gesture that defines the two spaces, without the need for traditional vertical dividing elements for to define a separation.

While clean lines connect the internal spaces of the home, the use of quality, time-wearing materials and detailing ensures the origins of craft are carried through into the new iteration. Celebrating movement and light, the stairwell in its vastness leads the eye upward, while also reinforcing a verticality. Bagged brickwork comes together through a tonal approach, avoiding pops of colour or influences of current trends. The use of oak and stone are utilised in a contemporary and classic way, with a large timber and steel screen veiling the exterior and reinjecting a rhythm into the façade – offering a nod to fretwork detailing of the traditional terrace.

True to the terrace origins, a similar matched understanding and appreciation of scale and proportion allow the home to breathe and stand as its own entity, embedded in place, while fittingly appropriate.

Alexandria House offers its occupants a sense of encasing enclosure, while also connecting to place through weaving in key gestures from the surrounds. Andrew Burns Architecture beautifully combines the new within its context and ,in doing so, creates an interesting template for preserving scale and history, reinterpreted.