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The brief to Sally Sutherland, co-director of Source Architecture, for the March House in Orange, NSW was relatively simple: create a new living space that captures the northern light, and opens out to the established garden. This broad brief placed immense trust in the architects, and a large responsibility in delivering the project in a twelve month window from initial engagement to handover. From a traditional 1910s Federation property, to a renovated light-flooded home with a garden pavilion, all within a year!
The new addition extends out from the heritage home, and Sally explains ‘it was important to maintain the integrity and legibility of the existing structure.’ The contemporary addition is distinctly ‘new’, rather than attempting to conceal its identity. Sally explains ‘we are always careful to scale the new addition so that the existing house is not overwhelmed, and the interface between old and new seems natural and calm.’ The courtyard both creates a link between the old and the new, and invites the residents out into the garden, landscaped by Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture.
The new pavilion provides a kitchen, dining and living space, housed in a minimalist flat roofed black extension, clad in vertical blackbutt timber screening, with the residents welcomed through a custom sculpted timber batten door. The existing home was also fully restored, with ‘every surface renewed.’ The renovations feature new joinery by JRW Joinery, custom furniture by Will Brennan Design and custom timber work by Dan Szpykto, and considered soft furnishings and curtains. Sally highlights ‘no detail was overlooked: even the light switch pulls were replaced with a bespoke turned timber pull.’
All of these elements coalesce into a fully resolved contemporary home, that gently draws the past into the present. Sally emphasises that ‘projects like this only come about through the effort of a great number of people.’ A truly collaborative effort of architectural time travel, from Federation to the 2010s!
