An Offering to Fitzroy – King Bill House by Austin Maynard Architects
Paving its own path, King Bill House is an impassioned offering from its inhabitants to the suburb of Fitzroy – where instead of densifying, they chose to give back and create a new pocket park. Austin Maynard Architects brings this love for the area to life, in a home that as generous as it is unexpected.
While many inner-urban residential projects are driven to take every inch of space and amenity offered by the site, the clients of King Bill House were motivated to give back to, not take from, the suburb they love. Through the renovation and reworking of their beloved terrace home, they wanted to express and celebrate the elements they cherished about Fitzroy’s diverse and tightly woven fabric. As one of five circa 1850s terraces, the original façade of the home is untouched, and behind lies the clients’ ‘forever home’. Observing the home and the site, its empty eastern side garden (previously a separate vacant lot) and the formerly unused stable structure at the rear, Austin Maynard Architects’ approach was to view every space on the site and every room within the house as an empty zone and reimagine its use as a starting point.
The original heritage frontage is linked to the rear steel-clad stable (transformed into the garage and parent’s retreat) through a glazed curving corridor that runs along the eastern boundary. This glazed element becomes the main entry, reshuffling the hierarchy of the traditional and formal planning of the home, and also connecting and binding the new pavilion that contains the combined living, dining and kitchen areas as one. As part of celebrating the key and beloved elements of the suburb that the clients adore, maintaining existing trees and encouraging the growth of new ones was integral. Instead of clearing the site, additional plantings as well as protecting the existing vegetation, became an integral part of the works. As the new built elements then sit submerged in the established garden, the block is enriched through lush landscaping, making its own new pocket park that offers valuable green space to the neighbourhood.
While many inner-urban residential projects are driven to take every inch of space and amenity offered by the site, the clients of King Bill House were motivated to give back to, not take from, the suburb they love.
A house of contrasts, King Bill House defies the expected and instead proposes a new framework. From the entry onward, the house and its many parts are now changed. Entering through a glass and light filled corridor, past the old, the new and the repurposed, the experience is of living amongst a newly grown eastern garden park. Playing with scale, materiality and functionality, Austin Maynard Architects has completely overhauled the original bones of this terrace house, and, what is more, proposed an architectural response that celebrates and gives back to its suburb.
