Twin Houses

Just south of Brisbane, Twin Houses offers a new response to its low-density postwar context, providing amenity beyond the individual dwelling and contributing generously to the suburban microclimate.

John Ellway

Review by Kirsty Volz

Brisbane suburban streetscapes are often formed out of roads that cut through the side of steep terrain like a belt that’s worn too tight. Houses on the high side bulge over roads, where they appear bold and pronounced. In contrast, the houses on the lower side shyly sink beneath the road, with only their rooflines visible to passing traffic. This familiar streetscape is present as I drive through the southern middle-ring suburb of Tarragindi.

Twin Houses by John Ellway sits on the high side of a busy main road full of activity, with tradespersons’ utes and vans lined up along the street. It’s a typical scene for a low-density postwar suburb undergoing renewal, boosted by short-term economic stimulus. Twin Houses offers visual respite from this busyness with its lush green facades, deeply shaded undercrofts and retreating entries. Ellway’s pleasant design for the street-facing elevations of the project was an intentional response to what he describes as the “ocean liner” facades that dominate local streetscapes. He elaborates on his definition of “ocean liners” as houses with “a barrier of solid garage and entry doors at the lower level facing the street (the hull of the ship); a mini unusable verandah above, with a glazed opening behind, facing the street (the bridge of the ship); then a peppering of small ‘porthole’ windows down the side elevations to manage privacy and overlooking.”

Ocean liners are not a deliberate design outcome, nor a response to client taste. Instead, they are a blunt interpretation of town planning instruments for amenity through absolute privacy between dwellings and passive surveillance over the street. Twin Houses is exemplary in its innovative response to planning legislation in the way that it provides amenity beyond the individual dwellings and actively contributes to the streetscape and suburban microclimate.

The effectiveness of Twin Houses’ response to its suburban context is undoubtedly a result of the unique brief to design two identical dwellings side by side. With a background in the development industry, the owners made an “opportunistic purchase” of a postwar home on a suburban block, knowing that they could demolish the existing house and then subdivide the land into two separate titles. This meant that the brief for Twin Houses called for a design that prioritized neighbourly relations. Historian Emily Cockayne, in her essay “Love thy Neighbour” for The Architectural Review, writes that “Architects are in an unusually privileged position of being able to help to ameliorate the decline of neighbourliness by creating homes that accommodate modern requirements without isolating people in hermetic boxes.”1

Neighbourliness is inherent to the design approach Ellway describes: “There are no fences to the street or dividing fences between the two undercroft areas. The landscape of each house is visually shared, connecting both spaces to overcome the feeling of a narrow lot. Layered planting manages degrees of privacy, but areas open up enough to allow neighbours to chat, provide passive surveillance over each other’s property and create a sense of community.” The owners note that