Unexpected Warmth – Norwood by Architecture Architecture

Optimising a tight and challenging site, Norwood sees the re-sculpting of limiting conditions to reform a series of spaces that feel transportive in their resolve. Architecture Architecture infuses a welcomed warmth through textural and natural elements while balancing with an equal, necessary lightness.

Sitting unassumingly behind its existing façade in Melbourne’s inner north, Norwood is nestled into the quaint residential fabric of North Fitzroy. As with many of the heritage cottages of the area, what lies behind the façade, what remains and what has been retained is only unveiled and revealed once passing through the front door threshold. In this case, the existing is transformed from its previously dark, formal and segregated planning into an openly connected home, lined and bound through an array of warm elements. Unlike many of its neighbours, the home retains the existing proportions and instead of expanding upward or outward on them, optimises the journey through the home, altering through the interconnection of elements. Architecture Architecture draws on the original hand-crafted approach of the home and regrafts similar methodologies in the revisions.

Architecture Architecture draws on the original hand-crafted approach of the home and regrafts similar methodologies in the revisions.

Built by Hartman Construction Group, Norwood is formed on the ideals of unlocking its potential. Electing to retain the original footprint of the home, the internal volumes are made to feel more generous and expansive through transition elements and the insertion of flexible planning, allowing spaces to spill over onto one another. Clever and strategic integration of support elements throughout ensures amenity, storage and even furniture are all aligned along the outer edges of the home and made to feel like a natural extension of the architecture. Bringing in light was key to the transformative feeling of the project, and through full-height glazing elements, the rear yard becomes a key part of the home.

Extending elements beyond the building edge, like the kitchen bench that juts out into the courtyard, ensures a consistency of linework that emphasises the linear nature of the home. Leveraging off of the existing outer edges, integrated banquette and window seating allows for free-flowing movement through the centre of the home and embeds the needed flexibility. The coming together of the existing red brickwork with the introduced timbers feels deliberate and a natural evolution, while the introduction of crisp white plaster, steelwork stairs and joinery all act as a counterbalance, allowing each material to be celebrated.

Bringing in light was key to the transformative feeling of the project, and through full-height glazing elements, the rear yard becomes a key part of the home.

In its warmth, Architecture Architecture’s Norwood merges the comfort and familiarity of its heritage cottage origins together with a refined and intelligible contemporary nature, perfectly prepped for its next chapter.