House in Lilyfield by Charmaine Pang Architect

Camouflaged by trees, this ingenious extension by Charmaine Pang Architect gave a worker’s cottage the functionality of a family home, without detracting from its heritage charm.

Pang had long-range and lofty ambitions for her two-bedroom home in the inner-Sydney suburb of Lilyfield, but with the sudden challenges of growing family, a fast and innovative solution was needed. “We looked at it again with fresh eyes and thought, ‘what’s the quickest and most economical thing that we can do right now?’” she says. The answer was to leave the existing cottage as untouched as possible and to take advantage of the dead space at the side.

“All of the decisions around style were very much contextually driven. We wanted to defer to the [original] cottage and be sensitive to it.”

Unusual for a home in this area – where most of the residences are crammed side by side – this period cottage had been built with a three-metre-wide setback from the house next door. Though luxurious in terms of space, Pang says it was an otherwise undesirable passage: shady, wet, beloved by mosquitoes and only really used for wheeling out the bins. “It was very utilitarian and not a nice place to be.” This once-wasted space was the perfect spot for a box extension, incorporating a third bedroom at the front and a walk-through office space opposite. The design could also be incorporated while leaving the cottage essentially untouched – the only structural alteration here was to borrow space off one of the bedrooms to create a hallway leading to the new extension. The doors to the existing bedrooms were moved to this secondary hallway, essentially creating a bedroom wing, which Pang says makes the house feel significantly larger.

“It’s one of the rare projects that you can also see from the street,” says Pang. “All of the decisions around style were very much contextually driven. We wanted to defer to the [original] cottage and be sensitive to it.” The box extension steps down and is connected below the gutter line of the cottage for this reason, but it then slopes upwards for proportional balance with the taller house next door. This additional height is taken full advantage of with a tall bay window extending to the roofline and capturing views of the sky. Window placement was a key – if subtle – aspect of the design. “I didn’t want to clutter the facade with unnecessary framing,” explains Pang, who opted for a large fixed-frame window supplemented by an adjacent ventilation panel, which is clad in the same spotted gum battens and invisible when closed.

The extension is clad in spotted gum battens in a respectful nod to the cottage’s timber weatherboards, turned vertically to give the addition its own identity.

“Because of the difference in heights [between the cottage and the extension], I wanted a visual separator, and that was the slot window,” says Pang. This narrow aperture posed a window dressing problem, which was solved with two hinged cedar panels – these form a striking visual feature that is grounded in practicality as they can be operated independently when either light or privacy are required.

The extension is clad in spotted gum battens in a respectful nod to the cottage’s timber weatherboards, turned vertically to give the addition its own identity. “It’s finished in a natural Cutec oil, so the intention was always for it to silver and grey over time and almost disappear behind the trees,” says Pang. The trees are part of a simultaneous garden renovation, designed with landscape architect Miles Baldwin. This involved a complete facelift of the front garden (including replacing the steep stairs with a more graduated and inviting accessway) and of the side garden, which is now visually connected to the home via a wall of windows in the study and provides a seasonally changing view for Pang to appreciate while she works. “What was once a very disconnected passageway feels like a much more integrated part of the house, which we really love.”

Architecture by Charmaine Pang Architect. Build by BCM Aust. Landscape design by Myles Baldwin Design.