Jeremy Bull lives here

With three terraces linking work and home life, the architect and principal of Alexander &CO has brought a sense of community to the forefront for his team and family.

I was raised as an expats’ child, living in ‘compounds’ – as they were called – in the Middle East. We would run from house to house, or condo to condo, in the relative safety of communities behind doors or secured gates. I’m not sure how many we lived in, maybe half a dozen or so, before returning to Australia. For me, there was nothing better. Endless play dates and discoveries to be made in what felt like an endless backyard. Buildings were always arranged around common spaces, which were passive and friendly, and these were my earliest memories as a child.

Returning to Australia was at first an adjustment to the public and private suburbia that I was unfamiliar with. Coming to Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs from the North Shore was a further change. Domestic privatisation is a lucrative business, which doesn’t cohabit well with social porosity. Although I am not naturally gregarious, I am amply aware of our social contract to one another and the many tensions that reside for me in building walls and fences to keep us apart.

Coupling this early childhood with my own family and work life has led to our little campus in Bondi Junction; three terraces including our family home, the headquarters of our practice, Alexander House, and the A&CO Workshop. They all revolve around a central garden, which I call ‘the farm’.

My wife Tess and I first arrived at this address 14 years ago with our six-month-old twins Jude and Archer, drawn here by its convenience and relative affordability then. We had moved from an apartment with many stairs, and living in a terrace opening to street level was a profound relief with a double pram. It was nothing too salubrious back then, but it started our stewardship of Brisbane Street.

A desire to be available to Tess, welcoming our third and fourth sons Felix and Nash – and dog Indi – and being a working architect with often long days led to the purchase of the building next door, which we rebuilt into Alexander House. Two years later, Photography Nic Walker and with an expanding team, we procured an adjacent terrace that is now the A&CO Workshop.

I really wished to be available to my kids in a way that my baby-boomer father couldn’t and Tess could also have the flexibility of working as marketing director in our business while being close to all the domestic action. I really felt drawn to the idea of a walkable town.

Although I am not naturally gregarious, I am amply aware of our social contract to one another and the many tensions that reside for me in building walls and fences to keep us apart.

Our team members come and go between Alexander House and the Workshop. Our home remains a private little haven. Each has been renovated or built quite differently, and I love having my work community close to my family life. We have continued to modify the buildings as our needs demand, a sort of continued experiment and architectural evolution. There is a deliberate porosity between the buildings and between our professional and personal lives. Each building is so different, and the gardens house chickens and bees and a small vegetable patch.

I’m spending a lot more time outside these days, surrounded by frangipanis and magnolias and a belligerent honeysuckle, which is determined to take over everything. I am learning the careful art of growing vegetables and have started to pay more attention to the seasons and how the garden changes. It’s no surprise to me that I have tried in some small way to re-create the shared backyards of my childhood, some small attempt to invite in a community and marry it to my own family life.

I love it when my kids come in after school and find me in whatever meeting I am in, and I love seeing Tess duck back and forth between her dining table desk at our place to several metres away at her professional desk in the office.

I am proud of our place here, both physically and our place in our community. I often wonder how we could bring more value to our street and landscape. We have burned the boats so to speak, and I hope that we can continue to play our role bringing life and love to our part of Bondi Junction.

It’s no surprise to me that I have tried in some small way to re-create the shared backyards of my childhood, some small attempt to invite in a community and marry it to my own family life.