Playhouse
In adapting a Victorian terrace in Sydney’s Inner West, Carter Williamson Architects brings a sense of privacy and joy to the aptly named Playhouse.
Tucked into the tight urban grid of Newtown, Playhouse takes time to reveal itself. From the street, it reads as “a small little row house in a street of terraces,” as principal Sean Carter describes, even looking somewhat “defensive from the outside”. But, like many first impressions, it quickly dissolves. “As you come in and you journey through the home, that light that pulls you through this great void… you realise it’s anything but. It’s actually big and spacious and open and joyful.”
For Carter and principal Ben Peake, the project began with a familiar brief. “A typical inner-city terrace, a narrow site, but a long block, it was uninspired and wasn’t really fit for what our clients wanted to do,” Peake says. Their response was not to erase the past, but to rethink it – beginning, as Carter explains, from the public realm. “We always start from the public domain… we have a great responsibility to the street… it had to give back.”
That generosity manifests in a bold facade with a “big, colourful, ecclesiastical window” that Peake refers to as “an architectural mural to the street”. Complementing this outward-facing sensibility is an interior that allows for a great wellspring of privacy and seclusion. Inside, a familiar corridor gives way to a dramatic sequence of levels, culminating in light-filled living spaces below. “It is really a beautiful private domain.”
Bricks are central to both the structure and storytelling, offering durability, performance and a sense of the handmade. The core material is Bowral Chillingham White in a smaller profile of 50 millimetres, laid in a stretcher bond on the external walls and a stacked bond inside. “That just kept the bricky on his toes,” laughs Carter.
As Playhouse shifts from the traditional to something more playful, it certainly lives up to its name. “Homes can be joyful,” Carter says. “It doesn’t take itself seriously, even though it’s a serious piece of architecture.”
