A Beautifully Crafted Hybrid – Lena by Smart Design Studio

Injecting a newfound sense of self into a tired Victorian terrace in Sydney’s Paddington, Smart Design Studio creates a beautifully crafted hybrid between heritage and contemporary sensibilities. Through the combination of light and contrasting palette, Lena emerges as a respectful home of classic proportions and formality.

Like many of its neighbours in Sydney’s Paddington, Lena sits amongst the densely populated fabric of heritage rich architectural remnants of the area’s past. Spread over its five levels, the emerging home is reconnected through a revised sense of self and purpose, brought together through a cohesive palette and cohesive approach to form. With the owners repeat clients of Smart Design Studio, the pre-existing relationship of trust was key to the careful undertaking of fusing the old and the new. Through a contemporary and relevant lens, the original narrative and detailing of the home is preserved. The result sees a refined and crafted approach bring elements from the past into the present, the newer injections becoming enduring beyond their years as a result of the careful restraint used throughout.

Smart Design Studio have beautifully elongated an important addition to the area’s architectural history, through the creation of a comfortable and contemporary iteration, extending the original crafted focus.

Built by AEA Constructions, together with landscaping by Fieldwork Associates, Lena makes use of its full site, ensuring the home extends beyond the bounds of its built walls. Key to the connecting of each of the levels and the strong sense of verticality in the home is the conversion of an existing single storey mass (formerly a garage) into the transitionary element. The newly inserted form fills the void and inserts itself as a generous stair and lift feature, expressed with a narrow glazing element that runs the height of this space. The addition to the rear is sculpted out of hand-made brick and creates high, deep reveals, echoing a classical colonnade structure as each rises up and becomes the threshold between inside and out. The interior of this new generously open space is a destination at the rear of the home that contains the open-planned living, dining and kitchen spaces.

The architects worked to find a comfortable balance between retaining the existing and celebrating its detail and introducing new elements that spoke to a contemporary craft. The introduction of elements intended to last was key to the new efforts and to the reinforcing and extension of the home’s previous narrative. Throughout, a shared sense of formality is brought forward from the old into the new and out into the garden space, connecting all elements together. Textural rendered walls and a neutral base sit with ease along oak flooring and terrazzo elements, which are then framed through contrasting linework, giving a crisp and considered edge to everything coming together.

Lena is the uniting of time and space over a site to respond to its current custodians. Smart Design Studio has beautifully elongated an important component of the area’s architectural history through the creation of a comfortable and contemporary iteration.

Textural rendered walls and a neutral base sit with ease along oak flooring and terrazzo elements, which are then framed through contrasting linework, giving a crisp and considered edge to everything coming together.