Tamarama House
Recognition
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Sydney Design Awards
Residential
Silver (with Modscape Design) 2019
This award-winning family home combines rigorous architectural design with the efficiencies of prefabricated construction. At 340 square metres, it upscales and rewrites the modular rules.
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The project came from a collaboration between Studio Johnston and Melbourne modular prefabricated experts, Modscape. The site in Sydney’s east had a pre-existing house in poor structural condition. The cost of building new was prohibitive to their budget, so they looked for a creative, more sustainable alternative.
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The clients had input into materials and finishes, so it’s modular, but with customised touches.
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The existing cottage was demolished, and the new house built on its footprint. Working with Modscape, we arranged nine core building modules to achieve this 340 square-metre interior.
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It’s a very interesting way of building. The clients got a new home at around 66% of the cost of a conventional build, in around 25 % of the time. —Conrad Johnston
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Skylights and clerestory windows maximise interior light and cross-ventilation, while operable timber-battened window screens filter summer sun and add textural layers to the exterior.
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The arrangement of modules and façade were fine-tuned in response to the site, increasing the building performance. An expansive timber deck transitions the interior out to the garden, where remnants of the old stone footings are repurposed in the landscape.
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- Architecture & Interiors Studio Johnston
- Builder Modscape
- Photography John Madden