Renewed Personality and Purpose – BBW House by Tecture

Referencing the original home’s formality, BBW House takes cues in materiality and symmetry from its existing heritage home. Through a proposal of tiered volumes and layering on site, Tecture seamlessly connects the old with the new.

Sitting behind the original weatherboard cottage frontage, BBW House extends the existing through subtle references its original bones and dissecting and re-establishing a language that connects the past to the present. Taking cues in materiality, the planning references the formality of the home’s age, with a sense of ordered symmetry throughout. Through Tecture’s contemporary lens, the resulting home is a celebration of the heritage features, and the extension mimics an overall volume that extrudes the original silhouette and utilises a controlled palette to reference the humble simplicity of its frontage. Through a play of tiered volumes, a sense of layering and stepping mitigates the significant fall on the site, integrating the landscape as an extension of the home.

Taking cues in materiality, the planning references the formality of the home’s age, with a sense of ordered symmetry throughout.

Tucked into Geelong’s established inner-west suburb of Newtown, BBW House sees the restoration of the original home, with a layering of interior nuances to meet the client’s contemporary brief, and a double-height extension is concealed in the site’s generous slope. The accompanying pool house sits at the rear of the property, mirroring the extension in both form and volume on a smaller scale, and referencing a familiar materiality. Throughout, there is an agreeable and welcoming subtlety to the palette, where trends have been avoided in favour of a connected sense of context.

Constructed by Built By Wilson, in collaboration with joiner SCLK and landscape architect Bethany Williamson, Tecture’s approach emphasises a sense of the appropriate and the proportionate.

The side mudroom entrance is clad in vertical timber elements that denote the start of the new works, wrapping around the north and west façades and adding warmth, movement and texture. The original four formal rooms have been maintained at the front of the home, and with intentional views to the landscape from the entry the line between old and new is deliberately blurred internally. At the precipice of this connection sits the stair which acts as a light-filled link between the home’s two chapters. Extending out and downward from this junction, a double-height void welcomes the dining, kitchen and living areas. The upper level of the extension then houses three children’s bedrooms and a north-facing living space.

Constructed by Built By Wilson, in collaboration with joiner SCLK and landscape architect Bethany Williamson, Tecture’s approach emphasises a sense of the appropriate and the proportionate. The connection and celebration of the old and new is seen in the expression of original detailing, and the consideration and clean lines evident in the new works. BBW House balanced a formality that is both familiar and restorative, creating both a physical and a temporal extension, allowing the home to embark upon its next chapter with re-assured personality and purpose.

Tucked into Geelong’s established inner-west suburb of Newtown, BBW House sees the restoration of the original home, with a layering of interior nuances to meet the client’s contemporary brief, and a double-height extension is concealed in the site’s generous slope.