Dolls House

by Day Bukh Architects

A Sydney Federation home converted to a modern light filled living space.

This dark federation home in Sydney’s inner suburbs, has been transformed into a light filled family home. Design of this house was carefully cut, folded and shaped to create a new contemporary space throughout, whilst still maintaining the heritage of the house.

The existing semi-detached house was in its original condition with the rear of the house closed off to the rest of the house – for most of the year.

The new design of this federation house was to allow for easier access to the outdoors, with new living spaces, which now open out to an adjacent private open space, as well as a first-floor addition to the rear of the house for better living spaces.

Designed by Day Bukh Architects to meet the long term needs of a young professional couple, alterations and additions to the house were inspired by the traditional childlike idea of a gable roofed house of a doll house, and how that translates into purity of form and order of structure, within a piece of modern architecture.

In addition, landscaping to the property has been designed so that the outdoors flows into the internal living spaces, visually and spatially connecting the two.

With the north facing aspect of the rear providing excellent opportunities for passive solar heating, the house is able to achieve the best possible environmental sustainability, in a dense urban space.

A new open plan living kitchen and dining room, with direct access to the rear garden were also included into the new design of the Doll House.

And, operable timber screening on the first floor, as well as an overhang over the ground floor we created, to aid in controlling the building from overheating in the warmer months. A new laundry, with attached drying court was also created.

A first-floor addition for two bedrooms and a bathroom were also added, with the master bedroom having spectacular views of the city skyline.

Photographed by Katherine Lu.

Keep up to date with The Local Project’s latest interviews, project overviews, collections releases and more – view our TLP Articles & News.

Explore more design, interior & architecture archives in our TLP Archives Gallery.