A whole house in 60 square metres.
The site is a 332-square-metre block in South Launceston with an existing Victorian Georgian cottage listed on the Tasmanian Heritage Register. Our clients had purchased the property as an investment and wanted to know whether a second dwelling could be built alongside it. A town planner's preliminary advice confirmed that the site was too small for a separate house, but an ancillary dwelling of up to 60 square metres - sharing services with the main cottage - was possible.
That constraint became the project. Sixty square metres is not much, but it is enough for a carefully planned two-storey home if every decision earns its place. The challenge was to fit a functional, comfortable dwelling onto the remaining land while respecting the heritage cottage, maintaining its streetscape presence, and meeting the planning requirements for setbacks, open space and neighbourhood character.
Reading the street before drawing a line.
Charles Street South is defined by its pre-war workers cottages - single-storey, hipped roofs, close-set eaves, weatherboard cladding, symmetrical facades. The new dwelling needed to sit within that rhythm, not compete with it. We designed a conventional hip roof form to the street, with a central window and a simple symmetrical front elevation that echoes the proportions of the cottages around it. The first-floor bedroom is tucked partially within the roof space, reducing the overall height so that the two-storey building reads at a scale comparable to its single-storey neighbours.
The front setback follows the staggered alignment between the adjacent property and the existing cottage, maintaining the established pattern of the street. The heritage cottage retains its primary frontage. A 1.2-metre picket fence to the cottage and a 1.8-metre semi-transparent picket fence to the ancillary dwelling are both simple, functional and consistent with the streetscape character. Horizontal weatherboard cladding and roof sheeting matched to the existing cottage reinforce the connection between old and new without pretending the ancillary dwelling is something it is not.
Small footprint. Generous outlook.
At the rear, a north-east-facing courtyard of 38 square metres opens off the living space through full-height sliding doors - level, accessible and bordered by raised garden beds. It is a modest outdoor space, but its orientation and its direct connection to the interior make it feel generous. Inside, every decision was guided by the same logic: that a small home well planned can feel more comfortable than a larger one carelessly arranged.
The environmental benefits of building small are real. Less material, less energy, less land consumed. But here they are also an honest response to the budget - our clients needed the project to work financially as well as architecturally, and a compact, well-considered building does both. The result is a house that earns its place on a tight inner-city block without crowding the heritage cottage it stands beside.
