Allen Jack+Cottier | Glass Loggia House

in Architecture by editor — 7:36 pm | September 13, 20111 comment

This project has brought new life to a grand two storey High Victorian style residence with a dark rear living spaces and run down garden. The house was originally a private zoo, so when work started in 2003, the landscape architect retained and reused existing building remnants to construct a “Garden of Ghosts” with a polished concrete pool ‘fenced’ by a fish skeleton vitrine and a plant filled moat.

Quirky layers over a time created a rich and magical context in which we were asked to design a dining area and a bedroom with ensuite, whilst solving the problem of lack of winter light to the formal living spaces, caused by an existing cypress stand to create a useable outdoor area in a way that responded to the grand scale of the existing building and was appropriate to the conservation area.

The loggia and new rooms exploit the ambiguities between what is inside and what is outside with a dramatic external steel mesh curtain shading the whole north-west facade which operates to transform the loggia and garden spaces for different family functions.

Location: Glebe, NSW, Australia
Architect: Allen Jack+Cottier
Photographer: Nic Bailey