Centripetal

Terrace House

Sydney, Australia

panovscott

© 2015, panovscott Architects.All rights are reserved. No part may be reproduced without permission.The authors have endeavoured to contact all relevant copyright holders prior to publication. Should an error have occurred please notify the authors so subsequent editions can be rectified.

ISBN 978-0-9924889-5-6

Photographs by Brett Boardman and panovscottTypeset in Twentieth Century, which was designed by Sol Hess in 1937.

For further information please visit panovscott.com.au

This project is the radical reconfiguration of a narrow Sydney terrace house for a mother and her son. It is a third project in our ongoing preoccupation with inner city row houses and furthers our research within the type.

The northernmost of 5 in the terrace, the existing house was built from a pattern in 1896. As we found it, the pleasingly proportioned and fenestrated street facade was in good condition. Unfortunately the interior was not similarly preserved. The living rooms were arranged as an isolated enfilade, with a series of elements demarcating the individual rooms; a strange parabolic arch, a steep rickety stair, walls with needless doors, and a little family bathroom. The resulting spaces had a strong impact on the way our client and her young son lived. Throughout the day the two could only be in close proximity within each of the small rooms, or the small associated front and back gardens. There was no ability for more nuanced spatial relationships to develop. Such relationships nurturing the burgeoning independence which is central to the growth of any young child. It could be said that if the home is a manner for a family to come together comfortably, it must conversely allow each member to be comfortably individual, alone within the collective.

This kind of collective claustrophobia within the existing house was heightened by its radically small size. Only a touch over 3.6 metres in width, the internal spaces were further reduced by meager illumination - the result of ineffectual windows which in turn inhibited any kind of air movement and so connection to the greater environment.

Our astute client understood this of her family and the existing house, and so asked us to rehabilitate the structure to enable a better way of life. Thus tasked, our initial design discussions suggested the internal environment of the house be rearranged around an absence. This void space would be of non-defined use, enable both light and air into the centre of the plan and be subsumed moment by moment into the inhabitation of the surrounding spaces.

A few years earlier we had spent some time in the Anhui province of China, our intent being to see the magnificent sculptural landscape of Huangshan. Just prior to our ascent, we spent a day wandering the narrow paths of the village of Chengkan. Seemingly alone amongst the miraculously preserved domestic architecture, we spent a quiet moment in Yan Yi Tang or Swallow’s Wing Hall, the residence of a wealthy Huizhou merchant named Wang Ganchen. There in the mountains was an ancient home, as densely urban as you would like, inward looking with a rectangular courtyard open to the space of the house at the ground level and above narrowing as it penetrated the upper floor and roof. This tianjing or skywell brought a limited vista of the sky into the house but its innate beauty as architecture was the manner in which it animated the public domain of the home. Both environmentally, with the wonderfully mutable quality of light and air, and as a manifestation of the social order within.

Utilising the spatial characteristic of the tianjing, combined with contemporary construction techniques and expectations of comfort, our design evolved into a consideration of the room and the nature of its definition. Our discussions isolated the experiential poverty of open plan space and so living. The experience of the existing house demonstrated the frustrations of isolated rooms. Balancing as such between those extremes, we developed a number of strategies in which the room could be, and not quite be, at any given time.

On the ground where the connection to the street and garden is enabled, where the family most often come together, and where the guest is received, we have defined the rooms most enigmatically. By subduing the architectural elements which traditionally define space, our intent was simply for light qualities to demarcate. To enable a room defined by light.

It has worked beautifully, the varying nature of natural light enables the room to be more strongly or ephemerally defined. When offered a soft sky on a cloudy day, the light spreads to fill the space, and conversely becomes more finite in brighter skies. At night the relationship inverts with the room defined via a pool of darkness, around which brighter rooms are arranged.

Above, the rooms are more private and so narrowly defined. Here our intent has been to enable inhabitation of the edge and the ability to bodily transform the room demarcation. Windows slide, solid hatches hinge, screens provide veiled vantages and partial silhouettes, a door is oversized becoming a pivoting wall, a seat is offered between stair landings.

The manner in which spaces are made and the specific way in which they are inhabited can be seen as central to this project. This idea is one of room making, though in this instance, the mechanisms by which a room is traditionally made are eschewed for more transitory or enigmatic boundary definitions.

We call this project Centripetal, meaning to seek the centre.

Parts of a whole

Garden

What we do not do is sometimes more meaningful than what we do. In the garden we sketched a finely crafted intervention which would reinvigorate the moment of homecoming. But in the end our hand is much more laconic. As such the pattern is retained, a manner of entry shared amongst all of the terraces and over many combined years.

Entry

A few steps up from the street and just within the door is a place for shoes and the decorum of reception and leaving. Made with white limewashed 19mm AC interior grade hoop pine, it is conceived as the miniaturisation of a foyer. In that way it is not so much like the Japanese genkan where behavior is closely prescribed, ritualised, and so the requisite space can be minimised. Here our intent is to allow the act of entry and exit to occur in all its variability within a space that is both small and complex.

We constructed a delicate connection with the kitchen beyond, but shielded. A hidden alcove and power supply allows keys, coins, phones and those things collected to be accessible from both spaces. A low shoe shelf doubles as a perch. A cupboard is concealed just further along for coats, umbrellas and school bags. The foyer is terminated by an unadorned white wall perpendicular to the path of travel which allows a glimpse of the spaces ahead, an ongoing experiment of ours in the perception of entry. Movement along the foyer space allows the shifting perspective to open the view to the house beyond. Shortly before the white wall the visitor turns 90 degrees and understands the width of the house as an interior space for the first time; its radical narrowness.

We remember Sean Godsell’s story about his first house, so small that he sacrificed a large proportion of the floor area to enable a visitor to traverse the length of the site, from front to back before encountering the first room of the house. Though we imagine the momentary frustration of rushing home to the toilet, or carrying the shopping, we understand and admire this arrangement of space as a manifestation of the exultation of experience. It is an example for us of how the heightened experience of homecoming can be found only through eschewing certain aspects of comfort. In our conversations with clients we find ourselves discussing such small sacrifices of convenience. How they are often necessary to allow a richer manner of habitation. How if carefully considered and accepted this can enable the everyday to approach the sacred.

The floor is 85mm wide dressed Blackbutt boards, secret nailed, with a burnished Synteko natural oil finish. These hold the light wonderfully, offering a deep, subtly variegated texture and playing a large part in defining the mood of the entry and spaces beyond.

Kitchen

The kitchen is also faced with limed hoop pine, the bench Corian with an undermount white ceramic Villeroy & Boch Subway XU sink and Astra Walker kitchen mixer. We’ve brought the vertical ply panels right up to conceal the bench edge making for an elegant line and a more ergonomic handle to the concealed storage and appliances below. There are few overhead cupboards, instead an appliance cupboard in white laminate holds assorted accoutrements which slide out as the benchtop extends inwards. The oven is 600mm, the gas cooktop 900mm, both Miele. The rangehood is Baumatic 75cm, undermount, concealed behind a joinery panel. The fridge is patriotically Fisher & Paykel and integrated into the joinery with a concealed splay-cut handle, similarly the dishdrawer. The wonderfully rudimentary splashback is white laminate to match the adjacent wall (commodity never to be forgotten amongst the firmness and delight). The kickboard is locally sourced Blackbutt, the material of the floor. Above, the track light is white Trio with Tubo 15 track spots from Opal Lighting.

Dining

The vintage teak and oak dining table is the Model No 281 made by Fredericia and designed by Borg Mogensen, the teak and upholstered dining chairs are by HW Klein, both from Vampt. The small bench alcove allows C or a visitor to stand or sit against the wall and converse with K at the kitchen bench - a small gesture that enables the galley shaped kitchen to become more social. That and the open ends connecting to the living spaces of the house beyond, and the life of the street in the other direction.

Laundry

Located within the white laminate panelised wall that conceals the stair, two panels hinge outwards to reveal the laundry clad in unfinished compressed fibre cement sheeting. Further panels open to exploit even the smallest space under the stairs and within the thickness of the walls surrounding it.

Stair 1

The materiality is a continuation of the floor. Lapping the vertical surface up in front of the horizontal, the view of the stair on approach is simplified. Whilst descending, the 19mm edge of the vertical board on the horizontal surface offers a subtle colour differentiation to enable a more visible step edge. There is no skirting on the stair, the wall finish is applied prior to the floor and a small gap left unadorned which allows for the expansion and contraction of the timber. The width of the stair is generous at its base. The first riser protrudes into the dining space and two steps up, the landing offers an informal seat. Within the stair the light levels are slightly reduced to imply privacy and hence discourage unsolicited entry, though once within, the natural light in the hall above is greater, allowing ease of movement.

Light court

Back at ground level and beyond the stair, the ceiling stops and a space opens through the upper levels to the sky. A sky space as viewed. This space in turn connects the rooms within the three levels of the house.

WC

90x45 dressed and painted oregon battens draw the eye upwards towards the sky. The last two battens form the handle of a large pivoting wall panel that provides access to the wetroom and toilet. The floor is smooth finished concrete, the walls share this low grey-mottled sheen being large adhesive-fixed panels of compressed fibre cement. The shower and tapware is Astra Walker, and the combined basin and wc is Caroma Profile 5. The large door mechanism is a cost effective Dorma pivot system that allows the door to swing both inwards and out in case of an emergency within. Heavy duty rubber seals around the door inhibit both water and sound migration.

Living

The coffee table is the FLY Coffee Table by SPACE Copenhagen in white oil/Carrara marble from Great Dane Furniture, as is the lounge which is the enigmatically named Australia Sofa, designed by Illum Wikkelso, a great example of Danish mid century design. The few downlights used here and throughout are a narrow flange LED Audrey Tilt by Boaz. The joinery item (which is almost carpentry) is by Michael Refalo; it conceals the tv and stereo system and references a number of other elements in the house. Curtains are open weave on an s-fold track affixed to the splayed white painted timber beam which stabilises the end wall. In front of the curtain a narrow slot skylight brings the western light into the space just behind the wall. This subtle balance of light ameliorates contrast between inside and out, hence alleviating glare in the western most room of the house. The low profile biparting doors slide back against the adjacent wall externally to disappear completely from within. The eaves gutter, profiled to allow an elegant weir edge, is folded plate steel and supports the door track system. The proportioning and size of the openings allow K & C to live right at the edge of the living space in comfort and privacy, whilst still maintaining a strong connection to the play of light, the breeze, the scent of the garden beyond.

Bedroom

Above, the front room and balcony overlooking the street have been preserved. A new robe inserted, the floor renewed, and the door hardware replaced in kind, so that the character of the space is retained. This is the only area in the transformed house not immediately connected to the central absence, and so offers a place of refuge from the life of the house.

Bathroom

This room holds the most lovely silvery light, somehow managing to be warm and cool at the same time. We have been very careful to craft surfaces that absorb the light, limiting reflection to the far wall. The singular material, panels of compressed fibre cement, is the most rudimentary of building materials (used in almost every bathroom as the substrate behind the waterproofing and finishing tiles) but has been installed with the care one would expect of the finest of stone. Concealed behind these panels are the plumbing and exhaust risers, the toilet cistern, the hot water heater, and lots of storage. The requisite mirror is relegated to the rear wall. It covers the whole wall and employs the old technique of doubling space visually and augmenting a meagre unidirectional light source. Here we utilised Astra Walker tapware, the Duravit Vero wall hung vanity and integrated towel rail, the Duravit Architec wall mounted wc with concealed cistern, a minimal frameless glass shower screen, Vincent Buda stainless grate drain, and a Kaldewei Saniform Deep bath.

Beyond the bath is a ledge and three operable hatches on Whitco stainless steel friction stays which baffle the light from the court. They also provide visual and acoustic privacy to the living below and to C’s room beyond. This bath is at the spatial heart of the house and we had more than a few conversations about the power of observation and the observed as it relates to Bentham’s Panopticon and in a more domestic context the boudoir at Adolf Loos’ Villa Muller. That said it would quite simply be a fantastic place to lie back with a book and a glass of chardy, the sky above and the life of the house below.

Bridge

This space on the level above the ground we call the bridge, though conceived more as Ponte Vecchio than some kind of purely trafficable infrastructure. It is made from dressed and painted oregon - the soffit, the screen and the seat - and by the builder on site. Again this is an example of a most rudimentary material elevated purely by intent. Able to be flexibly inhabited, the space is an extension of C’s bedroom. Above, three sheets of glass allow light to enter. At the lower edge, the glass cantilevers out to form a tiny overhang. Underneath, three solid timber hatches with insect mesh allow a trickle of air to refresh the interior and exhaust the hot air that would accumulate beneath the glass under solar loading. This concert of elements will suck the cooler air from the lower parts of the house and gardens, thus creating a gentle breeze through the centre of the house on even the hottest and stillest of summer days.

Bedroom

C’s bedroom opens internally to the bridge with a generously wide pivoting door that is rarely closed, whilst in the other direction the external doors slide back against the facade to enable the room to be flooded with light, air and outlook. The opening retains the vertical proportion of the original window it has replaced and its modification finds the delicate balance between privacy from overlooking and the generosity an enlarged opening enables of the small room. An assembly of simple joinery provides adequate furniture for the room – a wardrobe, a bed and a set of display shelves for C to curate his collections.

Stair 2

Again narrowing, the bounding wall of the stair room is reduced to the thickness of a piece of plywood, and the stair itself to only 640mm. There is a stark disparity between the width of this stair, which leads to a single room, and the stair below, which leads from the more public living rooms to this stair and the more private realm of the house. The disparity results in a small gap where the structures overlap, allowing a sliver of light to drop between and through the levels of the house.

Attic

Turning at the top of the stair brings a moment of incomprehension. Where the rest of the house has been contained between the two long parallel boundary walls, here the vista opens through a large corner window. Across the rooftops Botany Bay is visible, and the distant aircraft of Sydney airport which so captivated C during the design process. On entering the room, the shifting perspective reveals the corner as a chimera. A large mirrored surface aligns to amplify the meagre width of the space, which is the physical termination of the journey within the house. This room is for guests and for C as he grows to find a place even further apart. For now it is laid out as a pretty cool model train room.

Critique

by Stuart Vokes & Aaron Peters

Negotiating the pageantry of a sunny North Bondi day is a memorable experience for the visiting northern architect. On the occasion of our visit to the Centripetal House we found ourselves racing through the throng from a prior appointment. We were met by Anita Panov and Andrew Scott at the front gate and ushered across a narrow verandah. Having arrived (albeit late) we were delighted to be led out of the mid-January heat and glare into an intimate entry vestibule. Almost immediately, a sense of calm descended and the sophistication of the spatial planning became apparent. This miniature room gave us pause to compose our thoughts (and catch our breath) while we attuned our senses to the unexpected generosity of the rooms before us.

The Centripetal House is a renovation to a classic nineteenth-century Sydney terrace. We began by discussing the provenance of the original building: how it might once have been occupied and by whom.

Conforming to the cultural conventions and social mores of the day, building designers of this era championed propriety through formal reception rooms and treated the daily practices of cooking, cleaning, sleeping and dressing as utilitarian acts to be sequestered away from public view. Public and private spaces were expertly partitioned and clear thresholds delineated indoor and outdoor spaces.

In contrast to this conception of the private house, most contemporary Australians expect their homes to express personal values, showcase their personality and provide means for deriving comfort and pleasure through daily rituals. As a result, the open plan has largely supplanted the cellular planning arrangements of yesteryear. The compelling connectedness that has followed has brought with it photogenic volumes filled with light and air. Rooms fit for furnishing with bold, individualistic pieces.

The revitalized Centripetal House draws on the best of both traditions. The owner and the architects sought to revive the idea of nineteenth-century room-making while satisfying contemporary twenty-first-century expectations for illumination, volumetric generosity and social connectivity.

Each of the spaces in the building is enriched through its relationship with the spaces around it. A central void drags natural light from rooftop glazing through the two lower levels of the house. Surrounding rooms, such as the second-floor bathroom and “bridge,” profit from this relationship by borrowing space and illumination from the void.

A particular highlight of the building is the suggestiveness of the architecture. An occupant is frequently reminded of the spaces located above or below. Glimpses into the partially enclosed stair room and the visible protrusion of treads at the bottom of some flights hint at the possibility of vertical movement, of unseen rooms beyond. The presence of light streaming down from above excites curiosity as to the source of the illumination. The scent of an evening meal being prepared is permitted to drift up through the building. The murmur of conversation in the garden or the echoes of footsteps in the bedroom corridor announce unseen events in distant parts of the building.

It is here that the synergy of nineteenth- and twenty-first-century room planning becomes palpable. The owner’s brief emphasized the importance of the relationship between herself and her young son. The architects have nurtured this bond by developing a plan that promotes mutual awareness. Both occupants can maintain a sense of one another without sacrificing independence or privacy.

Significantly, the house also seeks to engage its broader context by arranging the kitchen directly behind the historic front facade. The life of the street becomes a companion to prosaic daily rituals such as making toast or loading groceries into the pantry. This simple planning gesture is designed to remind the occupants of their relationship to the city and to encourage contemplation of life beyond the day-to-day domestic existence.

Often, the failure of a contemporary open-plan house can be found in its lack of discretion; little is left to the imagination. Privacy is difficult to control and good order can be labour-intensive to maintain. Striking the right balance is difficult to manage, but here, panovscott has skilfully measured its interventions to offer generosity, arouse curiosity and excite exploration, while maintaining the informality and ease expected of a contemporary dwelling. The needs of both the household and the individual are met through a thoughtful collection of interconnected rooms.

Tellingly, in a note to the architects sent shortly after moving into the house, the owner does not dwell on luxurious materials or the convenience of appliances on offer. Rather, she commends her architects for their contribution to the social life of her family and the spatial quality of the new volumes. This is because, although the house is beautifully finished and appointed, its principal virtue is the subtle complexity of the room-making.

The Centripetal House is a society of rooms where each individual can find a space of their own in which to dwell.

0 1 3 7m

1.

I have few memories from deep in my childhood of those couple of weeks during which my parents sent me to Sunday school. One detail however has remained vivid - that of the rock which was rolled in front of the entrance to Jesus’ cave tomb. I remember being entirely nonplussed about the death and the rising. But that rock. I was captivated to think about how something so heavy could move and how that improbable action would so radically alter the character of the space within. I distinctly remember ruminating on the feeling of being entombed and the way in which the light would crack moonlike as the rock rolled away. In hindsight the power of that rock to capture the imagination of a small boy makes complete sense. What did I know of dying let alone miraculous resurrection? I did however know in my tiny bones the revelation of weight. The miracle of those things which might be so heavy as to be immovable, suddenly moving.

2.

Later, we stood in the picture room of John Soane’s magnificent mausoleum (tomb again!), a tall intimate space. The walls lined with images including the descent of Hogarth’s Rake. A hushed silence fell over those others gathered. A man with white gloves told us a story of one narrative cycle, and then another. Whilst doing so he reached forward and hinged a wall towards him, the space doubled in one direction. He turned and then pulled forward another, and then another and the last. I wondered at the theatre of the space animated.

3.

Closer to home we sat huddled on the peninsula and looked due south into the harbour, as a yacht beat windward directly towards us, poised in the most extreme equilibrium. At that moment - seemingly static - it suddenly pirouetted amongst the white caps and spinnaker flapping, then set, was dragged up the harbour and from our view in moments. We imagined the boat a few hours later in a deepwater cove as the sun set, those on board with a line in the water and a drink in the hand whilst the last of the light echoed about the bay and the sky deepened as black above as the water below.

Cuttings

4.

We found the deep orange earth walls and the palms one weekend as young students, chasing the meandering line of the coast away from the city in our panel van. Those walls gave little away, the strange intermittent horizontal projections causing much spurious speculation. We remembered Leplastrier’s description of the mythical client as he tended the grove in footy shorts and Georg Jensen glasses, and in turn the client’s description of his architect, raising his hand and his eyes to say but why build a roof? With the palms you already have one. Often we have paused to consider the majesty of that great corrugated copper vault sliding back to reveal the fronds silhouetted against the sky.

5.

Monumentally ugly, crude and exciting, there is floating within the web a movie of the Prada Transformer. Conceived by Rem Koolhaas in response to the patronage of Miuccia Prada, this structure was a temporary pavilion installed in the grounds of the Gyeonghui Palace in Seoul during the spring of 2009. It was a four sided shape cobbled together. Each shape was a floor plan and each plan representing a specific manner of habitation. The first was a hexagonal exhibition space, the second a rectangular cinema, the third enabled a circular fashion show, whilst the remaining plan was a cruciform which accommodated an art installation. To enable each plan/use the building was lifted by a concert of massive cranes and rotated in mid air. The client patron noted at the time that the Transformer concept was not for a generic space, but to be very specific, with all things separate in one building.

6.

Recently we have been doing some work in the park surrounding the Observatory citadel in the centre and above the city of Sydney. Our time on site has allowed some reflection on the occasional slow pirouette of these sentinel Cyclopes. Now operating solely as museum artifacts within this seemingly forgotten part of the metropolis. They remind us that such magnificent instruments, devised by us to see with ever greater precision, enable not only the greater understanding of the specific thing observed, but perhaps more importantly a wider realisation of things not yet understood. This could be thought of as the humility of an explorer. So beautifully articulated by Steinbeck when he observed that people really need sea-monsters in their personal oceans.... An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.

Cuttings