Close to Home – House Hurlstone Park by Carla Middleton Architecture

Crafted by its owner, House Hurlstone Park sees the extending of a heritage cottage into a monolithic form that engages with the natural elements. Carla Middleton Architecture combines the carefully detailed with the refined to propose a home of lasting fortitude.

Behind its original heritage cottage form, House Hurlstone Park opens up as an evolution of how we live in our homes in a contemporary sense. The decision to embrace the historical elements or balance them is a personal one, however, the need to create open and connected living spaces is a common thread. As a means to connect to the original detailing of the cottage, here, the new form uses a matched attention to craft in each of the comprising elements, ensuring a refined and enduring resolve. Although the new feels like a morphed version of the existing, the use of recycled bricks connects back to the story of its lineage. Working closely with a passionate client, Carla Middleton Architecture ensures the old and new coexist harmoniously.

Although the new feels like a morphed version of the existing, the use of recycled bricks connects back to the story of its lineage

House Hurlstone Park is sculpted as an evolution of what lay before. The new form twists and is punctuated with custom skylights and windows that bring an abundance of natural light inward and break up the formality and contained whole of the home. The rear addition becomes an interesting form of its own, with the effects of the handmade felt by the bricklayer’s attentive rigour, where sculpted corners and junctions are expressed and textural interplay dances between the recycled tones. From the outset, the use of brick laid the foundations for the resulting form, with the materiality influencing an approach through its limitations and capabilities.

Contrastingly, the interior offers a sense of relief from the textural and the mottled nature of the externally-wrapping brickwork. The use of clean lines and painted plaster is then made to feel even loftier from the spill of natural light coming in from multiple angles. While the cut-outs appear playful from the outside, they offer a much-appreciated connection to natural light and the sky from within, while alleviating the reliance on energy as a lighting source. The consistent lightness carried from the front door of the original cottage through the heritage rooms and into the new open contemporary addition binds the home together with a sense of purpose.

Contrastingly, the interior offers a sense of relief from the textural and the mottled nature of the externally wrapping brickwork.

Concealed from the street, the addition to House Hurlstone Park becomes an unexpected discovery of sorts. Carla Middleton extends the relevance of the home, while injecting a sense of the playful and curious.