This project is for a renovation and extension to a 1920s cottage in New Town, to better connect the interior of the house with the north-facing rear garden for a couple and their young child.

The cottage is a well-loved home brimming with personal artefacts and a whole lot of charm. With a double fronted facade of white stucco and asymmetrical gables it has an informal and endearing character which we sought to maintain.

The brief was to provide a master-bedroom with ensuite, new kitchen/dining/living room extension with the potential to close off private areas, and reconfigure the rear of the house connect to the garden and bring in daylight.

Demolition of rear lean-to service rooms orientates the dining room to the north-facing garden and maximises daylight to the original interior. A new two-storey rear extension to the east extends the gable roof line.

Plan and section are tightly worked for a playful and surprising interior with stepping floors aligned with terraced courtyard and garden, double storey voids, and a discrete master-bedroom suite secluded in the roof volume.

Interiors open to the luscious garden and are softly shaded by an overhead pergola and external trellised green wall.

Pedder Street Houses’s simple exterior belies it’s surprising and richly spatial interior, creating an intimate setting for family life.

From our client

“Our house had space but rooms were disconnected. We needed direct access to the garden and the ability to be together but not on top of each other.

The extension brings pockets of space, volume, light and connects to the growing garden. It feels warm, welcoming, calm even with a chaotic 5 year old. We can be together but in our own zones.

It’s lofty but intimate. It’s pretty fancy and architectural, but it’s also informal (it’s not a shoes-off house).

We are excited to live in a house that evolves with us.”

Awards

2024 Tasmanian Architecture Awards The Edith Emery Award for Residential Architecture (Alterations and Additions)

Bence Mulcahy team: Shamus Mulcahy, Sophie Bence, Bek Verrier, and Michael Renshaw.

Built by Thylacine Constructions Pty

Aldanmark Consulting Engineers, Pudding Lane Building Surveyors

Photos by Adam Gibson Photography

We are honoured to be awarded the Edith Emery Award for Pedder Street House at the 2024 Tasmanian Architecture Awards for Pedder Street House. 

Jury citation:

“Pedder Street House comprises the significant transformation of a traditional bungalow on the high side of a North Hobart residential street.

The spatially modest additions extend in an origami-like shaping of the envelope, framing external garden areas and accommodating interior spaces of light and prospect. The resultant architectural richness belies the limited budget and conceptually simple extrusion of the existing roof form.

The plan evolves from an offset entry foyer in the existing house. Movement through the short, existing central corridor reveals a sequence of spaces that start to shift in level in response to the opportunities that the site and envelope present.

A generous point of arrival between the dining room, under the existing roof, and the new kitchen creates an informal place of gathering and redirection. With stepped edges, pausing or sitting here is natural yet unexpected.

The folding of floor levels and volume continues through the kitchen to the living space that expands vertically to the full height to the new roof line. Nestled into this section, a master bedroom suite is presented as a pale-toned and more dimly lit refuge from the daily life that operates below.

Pedder Street expertly connects interior spaces to a multileveled garden and overlaps and intersects internal spaces with a level of spatial confidence that is exemplary.”

Bence Mulcahy team: Shamus Mulcahy, Sophie Bence, Bek Verrier, and Michael Renshaw.

Built by Thylacine Constructions Pty

Aldanmark Consulting Engineers, Pudding Lane Building Surveyors

Photos by Adam Gibson Photography