Armadale House

Armadale, Victoria, Australia

JACKSON CLEMENTS BURROWS ARCHITECTS

This project involved alterations and additions

 to an existing Victorian house that had been 

renovated in the late 1980s. 

The client brief called for a new second-floor addition 

comprising five bedrooms and associated bathrooms. An extension of this requirement was to reconfigure the ground floor living, dining and kitchen areas. A critical factor in the reorganization of these spaces was to consider how the proposed alterations and additions could engage with a large external garden.

The original Victorian U-shaped plan configuration was rediscovered and reinforced by a first-floor addition that follows the outline of the perimeter walls below. As a gesture toward connecting the house to the garden and vice-versa, the two outer bedroom wings of the upper-floor addition cantilever beyond the ground floor to engage with the landscape.

To further reinforce this gesture at the ground-floor level, a large deck area projects into the garden. This provides a new outdoor living space defined by a stone wall and fireplace an undercroft beneath the first-floor cantilevered bedroom wing.

The definition of the once-Victorian house is maintained as a rendered masonry construction type with punched openings framing views to the courtyard and garden beyond. The first-floor addition is a lightweight, timber-framed construction type with vertical cedar shiplap boards as cladding. The lightweight timber material and construction type provides a strong contrast to the masonry walls below. A black painted parallel flange channel separates the two materials as a shadowline and accentuates the cantilever of the first-floor bedroom wings on either side of the courtyard.

The first-floor window openings of the new works alternate between a lower and higher position, one scaled for adults and one for children, activating the corridor space .