URBAN SANCTUARY

An inner-city Brisbane home blurs the boundaries between inside and out with a series of flexible spaces designed with family life in mind

Flexible family-friendly living spaces offer indoor and outdoor living in this inner-city Brisbane home

The original Queenslander cottage, a small, dimly lit house, had very modest proportions and, unusually, plenty of brickwork: footings, a large, double-sized fireplace and a chimney. But as is typical of this type of building, the backyard was completely severed from the house and only accessible via a rickety deck. Jayson Blight of Blight Rayner Architecture and Melissa Blight of Twofold Studio wanted to reconnect landscape and building. In reworking and extending their family home in Highgate Hill, Brisbane, the couple initiated relationships between inside and out that begin at the entrance to the home and extend right through to the end of the 520-square-metre block.

The dialogue with landscape starts at street level. Enclosing a small front garden and tree, a new deck and bench seat were added to the verandah. Further into the site, brickwork starts simply as walls and expands to form a sculptured opening. An inbuilt seat frames the landscaped courtyard, which is placed between the new extension and the original house. Challenging the domestic scale, the monumentality of the brickwork sets the tone for the new, semi-outdoor living and dining space. From house into the garden, the brickwork changes from a beige Bowral brick to a recycled red brick from an old 1880s kiln. Marking the transition into the back garden is a natural overland flow path for rainwater that runs across the middle of the site and connects to the adjoining properties.

In the spatial sequence that starts from the end of the existing cottage, the outdoor room, dining room and kitchen form a contemporary loggia. The new addition holds the kitchen and dining room, with a retractable wall making the relationship with the outdoors and the rear garden totally open. “Walls and floors extend out from the inside, creating garden patios that maximise the inner city site, and more importantly enrich our social experience with the landscape,” says Jason.

LIVING SPACE The new living area is cantilevered over the garden. An original brick chimney at the front of the house is referenced in new brickwork at the rear.WALL A nine-metre wall along the adjacent property boundary anchors the eastern edge of the outdoor living space.BACK STEPS (opposite) Beyond the swale, designed to capture the natural water flow across the block, lies a bricked, stepped terrace with enough space to hold a firepit and seating.

This is an edited extract from Urban Sanctuary: The New Domestic Outdoors by Anna Johnson and Richard Black, published by Thames & Hudson, $70.