On a long, narrow site on Sydney’s Upper North Shore, the design for a suite of garden rooms plays on scale to compliment the proportions of the large, ethereal back garden.
It’s hard to resist the lure of the garden, especially at Lindfield House, where a mature and fantastical landscape 20 metres wide and 100 metres long engulfs the site. To honour this landscape and their clients’ love for it, architect Polly Harbison and interior designers Juliette Arent and Sarah-Jane Pyke created a suite of garden rooms that explore perspective, scale, tone and texture. Lindfield House transports the observer into an otherworldly paradise that is embedded in the immersive qualities of the garden.
At the front door of the original Federation-era home, an exaggerated sense of perspective is established by the sequence of new rooms stepping down to the garden. Oversized openings and floor tiles that increase in scale contribute to the visual illusion of the garden appearing to be within arm’s reach. This extraordinary achievement has roots in the Italian Renaissance, when perspective was first represented in painting. Here, it is used as a clever visual and spatial device, adding to the experience of dimension and achieving a sense of connection between the interior and nature.
While the new living room and sleeping chamber open directly onto the lawn and landscape, the ensuite and kitchen find connection to nature by looking up and sideways. The shower room is entirely outdoors – contained by tall brick walls that are open to the sky. Handmade tiles and recycled bricks, punctuated by an oversized portal window, envelop the space. The experience at sunset, when the portal window frames the fiery sky and the stars begin to emerge above, is breathtaking. By contrast, the adjacent bathroom is modestly scaled but richly layered, featuring floors of green and red venetian terrazzo and a vanity formed by teak timber joinery, green marble and bronze tapware.
The kitchen opens onto its outdoor complement, an adjacent courtyard. This most functionally demanding of spaces bridges traditional and contemporary aesthetics, drawing on both to give the room a strong and unique identity. A sense of grandeur is achieved with the green and grey chequerboard terrazzo floor, which is reflected in the contrasting tones of forest-green joinery and Calcutta Vagli marble benchtops. “That island bench is the heart of the house,” Polly says. “We wanted everyone to be able to see it from the front door and for the chaos of life to be celebrated there in the middle of the house.”
Internal walls: Walls painted in Dulux ‘Water Rock’
Flooring: Agglosimplex terrazzo tiles in ‘Verde Alpi’ and ‘Fior di Pesco’ from Santamargherita; Roso Marble honed stone stairs
Doors and windows: Bakers Joinery doors and windows; Style Finish Design hardware
Joinery: Green Satin Finish textured polyurethane in Dulux ‘Nimrod’ ten-percent gloss level; Calacatta Vagli benchtops; Casa handmade white tiles from Onsite Supply and Design; quarter-cut teak veneer
Lighting: Semi trimless downlight from Tovo Lighting
Sinks and tapware: Perrin and Rowe tapware from The English Tapware Company; Abey sink
Appliances: Wolf cooktop, oven and steam oven; Miele dishwasher; Fisher and Paykel fridge–freezer