Overleaf House

Inspired by the dichotomies of front and back, inside and out, dark and light, and old and new, the Overleaf House you to take a second look. With its crisply proportioned streetscape facade and brooding, bold rear composition, this hundred-year-old house has well and truly turned to the next page in its story.

Located in the Willoughby East heritage conservation area, our clients - a family of four with an energetic dog - discovered the house as a tired and somewhat decrepit dwelling, thankfully largely unaltered from its original construction. With an overgrown yard and no semblance of ‘landscaping’ present, our clients had an ambitious brief to reconfigure the original dwelling, add a substantial rear addition, and completely overhaul the garden. With this challenge at hand, we set to work.

With the original dwelling structure, our first big move was to relocate the front entry from the side of the house to, oddly enough, the front verandah. This was met with some resistance from Council’s heritage officer, but ultimately our grit and experience paid off with vastly improved functionality, amenity and legibility to the original structure and the front elevation in particular.

A generous open plan kitchen, dining and living room with stacking glazed doors completely opens the home to the new rear patio, blurring the lines between inside and out. The material expression – traditional bricks, polished concrete floor and the Shou Sugi-Ban timber – provides a warmth and strength to the renewed dwelling.

By shifting the front entry, we then completely reconsidered the orientation and purpose of the original rooms. This brought significant benefit to the spatial character of the expanded home, facilitating the interlocking of old and new spaces to form the split level rear addition, and enabling a new roof form with skylights streaming light into the previously dark spaces. A custom perforated metal balustrade slinks up the stairs, both screening and elevating the space.

As the design developed, the feature wall clad in Barestone was integrated with the main circulation spine, wrapping from the entry foyer and leading you down the hallway while cleverly hiding utility spaces behind subtle pivot doors - including a striking powder room. Integrated LED lighting mediates the folded, overlapping spaces, leading the eye up and along the dramatic raking ceiling over the double height void.

Where possible, period details in the original portion of the dwelling were retained, with new interior elements designed to compliment their colour, scale and patina. Soft-toned fluted stone, burnished metal finishes, deep hues and warm timbers compliment the deep reveals, refurbished timber framed windows, filigree stained glass and high skirtings.

Pulling the whole site together is the comprehensive landscaping scheme, designed and built by our horticulturalist client. Native ground covers accompany the mature tree arcing over the front entry path, perfectly framing the new entry to the dwelling. At the rear, an L-shaped gabian wall retains and articulates the raised lawn, with grasses, shrubs and feature trees intermingling with informal ground treatments.

Overleaf House ably demonstrates that a low carbon approach to building - retaining and reusing existing building fabric, putting passive design and mindful building size to the fore, specifying materials with a low life cycle cost, installing energy efficient systems, and embracing ‘loose fit’ design principles, can readily produce a flexible, expressive and heritage friendly design response that will age well for its next hundred years.