Maison de Famille

Maison de Famille is a renovation and addition by Sandbox Studio that turns a 2.5-bedroom 1920s bungalow in Marrickville, Sydney into a light-filled four-bedroom family home for a young couple of environmental scientists and their growing family.

The brief asked for two additional bedrooms and a bathroom, better connections between the house and the rear courtyard, and a sensible budget. The interior was originally dark and broken up by a series of ad-hoc additions.

Architects Luke Carter and Dain McClure-Thomas approached the work by keeping as much of the existing building intact as possible, refinishing the original floorboards and leaving or repainting the existing internal brick walls. The lean-to laundry and WC at the rear were removed and the space integrated into a new living room that opens to the garden through concertina glass doors.

Upstairs, two bedrooms and a bathroom sit under a gabled roof designed to echo the original rooflines so the addition reads as part of the house from the street. The upper level peels back from the rear wall to create a void above the living room that brings additional light and unexpected spatial volume into the ground floor. A reverse staircase of recycled timbers, elevated on a timber plinth, sits within this volume.

An existing downstairs main bathroom was remodelled in a crisp black-and-white palette, with period tiling that references the era of the original house, and shares its detailing with the new bathroom upstairs. Original front rooms were refreshed and repainted, while the functional galley kitchen was retained as a budget saving.

Sustainability is delivered through passive solar design. New windows are screened externally with aluminium louvres that significantly reduce heat load on the glass, and existing building fabric was rationed and re-used wherever practical.

Project size 162 m². Site size 278 m². Completion 2019. Two levels.

Architect: Sandbox Studio. Builder: Balmain Building Group Pty Ltd. Project management: Guenther Urban Projects. Photographs by Campaigntrack.