Love Match
An eco-conscious build on the site of an old tennis court becomes a grand-slam winner.
Afamily stroll led to what is perhaps one of the more unusual house-finding stories you’ll hear. In 2013, Taryn and Tyrone Gabriel were walking through a leafy suburb in Sydney’s inner west with their baby daughter Mila (now four) and Staffordshire bull terrier Zara when they spied a ‘For Sale’ sign on a vacant lot fronted by a graffiti-covered brick wall. The Gabriels lost no time in calling the estate agent.
Turns out that the sale was twin 237m2 lots – a rarity for the area. Two families jointly owned the blocks and had been seeking council approval to develop townhouses on the land, but those plans had fallen through. Taryn and Tyrone put in an offer and secured one of the lots for their dream home.
The couple engaged multidisciplinary design firm Hassell Studio to help plan a new build on the site, which was formerly a recreational tennis facility dating back to 1929. Tyrone, a regional sales manager for designer furniture company UniforVitra, had worked with Hassell on many commercial projects and trusted that the team would do justice to their vision – a compact family home with a European warehouse feel.
The process began in 2014 with an assessment by urbanplanning firm Urbis to determine if the site had any heritage significance. While strictly it didn’t, the wall was deemed a lovely heritage feature and council supported preserving it. “Retaining the wall was a key part of the design,” says the Hassell teams’s senior designer, Ciaran Acton.
Today, the brick wall – once part of a grandstand – forms the entrance to the property; behind it, the home’s gabled roof peeps over the top at street level. As the site drops 3m immediately behind the grandstand wall, it was essentially ready for the Gabriels to build their three-storey, three-bedroom home.
Steel-framed ‘portals’ allowed builder Richard Jones of Lancaster Building Group to erect the main structure quickly. (One not-so-tiny hitch was the 4.8m concrete kitchen island, which had to be brought in first; construction took place around it.) Lightweight burnt-ash infill cladding, dark metal roofing (Lysaght ‘Longline’ in Dulux Monument Grey) and glazing completed the structure. The north and south elevations were draped in a ‘veil’ of automated timber louvres that filter light and allow Tyrone and Taryn to controltheventilationandprivacy levels. “The louvres mean the natural light is layered, which gives each room a unique ambience,” says Ciaran. Hydronic underfloor heating was also installed under the polishedconcrete floors. It operates from the hot-water system and requires no additional electricity.
Stepping through the front door gains entry to the perfectly formed ground floor, containing a little office nook, two bedrooms that mirror each other (one is Mila’s, the other a guestroom) and a family bathroom with built-in Agape ‘In Out’ tub. A central stairwell leads up to Tyrone and Taryn’s luxurious first-floor retreat and down to the lower-ground floor. This last floor is the main living zone, containing a dark and moody movie room fitted with a magnificent Vitra ‘Alcove’ sofa; a combined laundry/ bathroom; and an open-plan kitchen/dining/living area that opens to a courtyard and pool.
The house has a warm and deliberately limited materials palette: lye-treated larch and polished concrete on the floors, birch ply and burnt ash lining the walls, and lashings of glass throughout. Timber is the real hero, says Ciaran. “It’s either oiled or gently whitewashed, allowing the grain to be honestly expressed with filtered, reflected light that honours the material used,” he explains. “The simplicity of the materials allows family life to unfold around them.”
This restraint carries through to the decor. Visual clutter is kept to a minimum and there are no artworks. The courtyard is simple and functional, too. “You don’t really need a backyard in the inner suburbs as there are so many parks nearby,” says Tyrone. Game, set and match.
Hassell Studio, Sydney, NSW; hassellstudio.com. Lancaster Building Group, Melrose Park, NSW; 0419 496 396.