A house that keeps its best moves hidden.
Built on the site of a former tennis court in suburban Newstead, 15/Love House was one of our earliest residential projects - and the beginning of a long working relationship with a client we have returned to several times since. The brief grew from a simple desire: a home where a close-knit extended family could gather easily, indoors and out, often without warning. Up to six adults and nine children taking over the spaces at once. The house needed to absorb that energy without feeling stretched.
Our strategy cut away the central mass of the building to form a courtyard, drawing sunlight deep into the living spaces and allowing the house to grow seamlessly between inside and out. The non-habitable areas - storage, services, circulation - are organised as subservient to the rooms people actually live in, freeing the living spaces to connect with both the courtyard and the rear garden.
Quiet from the street. Generous once you're inside.
A first floor is not immediately evident from below; its presence reveals itself through voids that create visual connections between levels. Downstairs, intimate views of family life. Upstairs, a release to the surrounding mountains beyond the suburb.
From the street, the house is deliberately unassuming. A subdued material palette and simple detailing present a modest face to the neighbourhood - one that does not announce the involvement of an architect but quietly rewards anyone who steps inside. It is the kind of building that only reveals its true nature and complexity when you experience the spaces first hand. The project won the 2014 AIA Tasmanian Award for Residential Architecture, and it remains a project we are proud of - not just for the spatial thinking, but for the relationship it started.
