Jigsaw House

Jigsaw House is a steel clad, cantilevered first floor addition to an Edwardian home in St Kilda West, Melbourne. The original dwelling was a single fronted, single storey painted brick stucco cottage on York Street, in need of extra rooms and sitting within a Port Phillip heritage overlay. Those planning constraints, the building setback rules and the sensitivities of neighbouring properties set the brief: add floor area without dominating the intact heritage streetscape.

The response bookends a new contemporary form against the red brick base of the original, with timber running as a defining material throughout. Red brick continues to the rear boundary, while the extended first floor is clad in dark steel. From the southern street the form reads as linear and balanced and stays recessive; from the northern courtyard below it cantilevers out at an acute angle.

Space was tight and none could be wasted. Generous rooms were made by borrowing surplus space from adjacent areas and by pulling daylight down through the first floor to the ground floor, often from unexpected sources. A skylight shaft washes light into the kitchen and living area, and the interlocking, puzzle like arrangement gives spaces that are finely scaled yet feel generous, each moving into the next with ease.

The home sits across two levels on a 180 m2 site and was completed in 2017.

Architecture and interiors by mcmahon and nerlich (Kate McMahon and Rob Nerlich). Structural engineering by Myer Consulting, building surveying by Steve Watson & Partners, built by Guild. Photography by Dianna Snape.