Vertical Realignment – Heliotropian by Studio Prineas

With a focus on the sweeping views that surround the home, Heliotropian is the reshaping of an existing residence. Studio Prineas aligns functionality and movement within the project, clearly defining openings and apertures to optimise views out toward the harbour and foster a seamless indoor-outdoor connection.

Originally built in the 1980s, the existing home took the form of an underutilised version of its potential. Engaged to overlay a clearer and more defined sense of purpose and structure, Studio Prineas strips the original to focus on an increased sense of grandeur and connection to place. Located in McMahons Point, the team realigns the home to take advantage of its views out over Sydney Harbour and creates an enduring and warm resulting home through the use of simple and natural materiality.

Engaged to overlay a clearer and more defined sense of purpose and structure, Studio Prineas strips the original to focus on an increased sense of grandeur and connection to place.

Presented as a terrace home from approach, the interior rooms were realigned to reinvigorate the structure’s function and flow. Overlaying warmth and texture through the integration of timber joinery and flooring, it is the lightness of the palette used that increases the overall sense of scale. With a mostly muted collection of tones used throughout, the home and its various levels are given consistent materiality that emphasises scale and allows outward views to become the focus.

Combining tumbled stone, white render, dark timber cladding and blackened steel, a classic approach to the encasing palette and material selections ensures longevity. Focusing on location as the core experience of the home, the reordering of internal volumes directs sightlines out to the surrounds. With a circular movement around the house, the home’s flow of motion ensures different elements of the view are experienced and an engagement with the natural elements is present. Through creating a sense of journey, a non-linear interaction between the architecture, the landscape and its inhabitants becomes central to the home’s experience.

Overlaying warmth and texture through the integration of timber joinery and flooring, it is the lightness of the palette used that increases the overall sense of scale.

Heliotropian sees the reshaping and reconnection of an existing home, where refinement and restraint underpin the new approach. Studio Prineas embeds a circular journey through the home, with both inward and outwards connections at the centre of each new gesture and intervention.