Crisp and Weighted – Annie Street by Lockyer Architects

Words by Bronwyn Marshall
Photography by Andy Macpherson
Build by Solido Builders
Interior Design by Shaun Lockyer Architects

Anchoring the otherwise lightweight home in place, Annie Street sees the proposal of a contrasting addition to an existing home. Shaun Lockyer Architects combines a regular and linear formal approach together with a restrained and textural palette to ensure the connection between old and new feels natural.

Located in the popular New Farm area of Brisbane, Anne Street extends an existing traditional Queenslander by adding a weighted addition to the rear and elongating its relevance in place. By not competing with the existing materiality, the new is a balanced insertion within the old, allowing a retention of the established streetscape and urban fabric it sits amongst. The initial works see the restoration of the elevated cottage home, ensuring its presence on the street is maintained and will endure for the coming chapters and its current custodians. The selection of materiality adds to an increased animation across the site, allowing for patterning and shadows to fall softly across the surfaces. Shaun Lockyer Architects focuses on creating a warm and inviting series of spaces to add depth to the otherwise light-weight home.

The connection out toward the garden is also highlighted, integrating greenery throughout and emphasising vistas and framed views to the garden setting the home sits amongst.

Built by Solido Builders, Annie Street is the expansion of the existing three-bedroom home through the creation of an open living, dining, and kitchen volume. The new adds both additional amenity and speaks to the way current homes are occupied, with the importance of such a large area for socialising, entertaining and for passive retreat. By creating this open space, there is a notional pull that brings occupants together and activates the rear portion of the home as a result. The connection out toward the garden is also highlighted, integrating greenery throughout and emphasising vistas and framed views to the garden setting the home sits amongst.

Contrast is used to both celebrate and delineate the old and new in Annie Street. While some additions and renovation works choose to conceal the transition or attempt to blend various eras, the team here has chosen to mark their differences as an equalising gesture. The openness also becomes a feature, with apertures added both on the vertical planes and the horizontal planes overhead. Above both the indoor and outdoor dining areas, openings bring light deep into the spaces and cast shadows that move throughout the day. A similar warmth to the the core structural concrete and steel is reinforced through the other select finishes amongst the new, while the older parts of the home remain light and more delicate.

Contrast is used to both celebrate and delineate the old and new in Annie Street.

Annie Street is the coming-together of two tales. Shaun Lockyer Architects has admired two distinctly different eras and times and approaches to residential design, emphasising and rejoicing in their nuanced details and how each expresses the idea of space.