Park Life is a highly contextual extension in Williamstown North. This contemporary design responds to the principles of the ‘garden city’, integrating home, garden and streetscape. In doing so, it continues the vision for the area as laid out by the Housing Commission of Victoria in the 1940s.
Located on Park Crescent in the Champion Road Estate Heritage Precinct, the area remains one of the best preserved of the early Housing Commission of Victoria estates, ‘notable for its strong visual homogeneity… and curving street layout around a central park.’
The length of Park Crescent features a broad nature strip, several meters wide. Most houses are set back from the street with low fences, contributing their generous front gardens to the streetscape. Located on a corner lot with its backyard facing onto Park Crescent, this project presented Architecture Architecture with a usual challenge: how to create a private backyard for their clients, while contributing to the generous, green park life of the heritage streetscape.
The artist’s studio mediates between streetscape and courtyard, establishing a clear threshold into the private realm of the property while presenting a deep, gentle curve that welcomes guests and neighbours to venture in, or a cocktail gathering to spill-out. A large timber-battened gate allows this threshold to be closed-down as required.
Inside, minor modifications to the existing house substantially restructure its use and function, establishing the quieter, private zones for sleep, study, music, and relaxation. The new living zones extend diagonally out from the existing house; walls flare, pinch and curve, sometimes stealing, sometimes surrendering space to the courtyard, ensuring both benefits from a sense of generosity.
Concrete, rendered brick, timber, and porcelain: materials here are subtle but earthy, establishing living spaces that are grounded and protective, hugging the side and rear site boundaries, forming the backdrop for the courtyard.
At the moment of transition between the old house and the new, the threshold swells to form a modest gallery, where the occupants of this house, artist, and curator, share their love of the visual arts. Text description by the architects.
