The narrow terraces that characterize older areas of inner Melbourne bring with them a bunch of problems when it comes to extending the living amenity.
The single-level ”tunnel houses”, especially those just five meters wide, such as the 1880s St Kilda property architect Tony Vella was engaged to change, are often compromised for natural light and have unwieldy internal arrangements.
In the 1980s, the house had been extended towards the north and had a long footprint incorporating a small side courtyard as user-unfriendly as the tiny backyard and ”the dark, central living room and kitchen”. In a commission to modernise to give the house three good-scale bedrooms, two bathrooms and a living-dining-kitchen, Vella was given an extra hurdle. With a pending addition to the family, it needed to happen in a hurry.
How to accelerate a rebuild that Vella said came down in essence to an interior-design project on a tight budget and in a precinct with heritage overlays, when the town-planning processes ”can often become difficult and lead to lengthy delays, and when a big part of the brief was to minimise delay”?
Solution: build within the existing house fabric. Vella says the ’80s brick additions were ”solid and well built. So we held on to the existing fabric and kept the window openings in the same positions.” The strategy sped through planning within three months. ”We spent another three months on the documentation and made the decisions quickly. We took another three months in the construction.
Read more at: http://smh.domain.com.au/renovation-and-decoration/light-at-the-end-of-tunnel-vision-20121012-27ge9.html
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