elbourne-based Coy Yiontis
Architects has been in practice
for twenty-two years in 2018.
In that time, notwithstanding
the impact of the vicissitudes of global
finances, the husband-and-wife team
have been honing their craft and evolving
their approach. The exceptional corpus
they can look back on carries within it
some common threads, combined with
a liberal sprinkling of new points of
departure and exploration as time has
moved on.
Rosa Coy and George Yiontis met in
Paris but decided to return to Melbourne
to start a practice and a family. They
soon found themselves with the enviable
task of designing a house for themselves
and their two young children. House
2 was the first dwelling they built
for themselves. It was created for a
188-square-metre block in Balaclava, in
the architect’s-own-home tradition of
“jumping on” a block that was too smalland oddly shaped for the general market.
This was the first time that the pair had
asked the question: What’s important in a
house? Their answer was uniquely tailored
to their own situation, with its generous
allocation for living spaces downstairs
contrasting with the monk’s-cell-like
response to the children’s sleeping spaces
upstairs. Unlike several of their iconic
houses, House 2 was not built around
a courtyard as such, but it does take
advantage of the triangular yard left over
on the polygonal block to create an open
flow between the interior and exterior.
House 3 was not the first, but is an
example of the type that the practice would
come to define – a particular approach to
courtyard housing. Once again a house for
Rosa, George and family, House 3 is the
extension and renovation of a traditional
double-fronted weatherboard cottage. The
project introduces a side entry that bypasses
the conventional front door threshold:
essentially, the arriving visitor moves down01 Coy Yiontis
Architects’ Prahran
office. Photograph:
Peter Bennetts.02 House 2 takes advantage
of a triangular yard left
over on its trapezoidal
block, creating flow
between inside and out.03 Generous living spaces
downstairs at House 2
contrast with the monastic
restraint of the upstairs
bedrooms. Artwork:
David Band.01