In this renovation of a Mosman house, designing for the site and environment was just as important as designing for the family who lives there.
House for BEES gets its name for its direct response to nature and the owner’s garden, with its own native beehive. But it’s also a perfectly personalised home for the clients, Sarah and Evan, parents to Barney and Eddie — whose names spell out the acronym referenced in the project’s title.
Downie North principal Catherine Downie says the owners approached her team to create a new addition for their single-level Federation home, in replace of a lean-to with a dated ‘70s kitchen, meals area and playroom and a garden that felt ‘overshadowed’ and closed off.
‘The house as it was kept getting in the way of being able to enjoy the landscape,’ Catherine says.
‘The beauty of the site was the unusually deep backyard where the clients and children would spend the majority of their time living, cooking and playing in the garden.
Tasked with creating a passively operated home that harnessed the elements and embraced the outdoors, Catherine says the 65-square-metre addition was conceived as a ‘garden room’.
For the sake of both sustainability and budget, they retained as much as possible of the existing house before creating new kitchen, living, and dining spaces at the rear. These spaces are ‘lightly contained’ by a floating roof made from aluminium, folded to capture northern light and easterly breezes. A concealed ventilation in the eaves then drags this air inside the house, passively cooling irrespective of the weather.
‘We love the simplicity of sitting under a canopy with a beautiful garden around you, enjoying good food with friends,’ Catherine explains. ‘Large sliding doors retract to completely dissolve the boundaries between inside and out.’
The casual and comforting living areas balance the architectural lines with cork flooring, chosen for its softness and environmental credentials. Reclaimed materials were another important part of the design, as Sarah personally hand-cleaned all the reclaimed bricks from the demolition of existing walls so they could be used in garden pathways. In addition to the lightness of its design and footprint, Catherine says the house benefits from 18kW of solar panels, two 5000L rainwater tanks and the lush edible garden, where abundant fruit trees and flowering plants provide food and shade to the property’s bees and visiting nature.
‘The house can open up to host quite a large garden party or be beautiful place to enjoy a quiet cup of tea,’ she adds. ‘The house encourages an awareness of the seasonal changes, watching native birds enjoying the garden as well as being a family focused place to enjoy each other’s company.’
