silhouette. By painting it black, they suppressed the non-original
materials and details. In a similar but inverse strategy, the interior
of the cottage was painted white.
The cottage has been turned into a private children’s zone,
containing two bedrooms and a loft playspace, and this end of
the site has become the rear. The clients almost exclusively use the
laneway entry and Welsh and Major designed the laneway elevation
accordingly. It has a formal street number and a gate with a bespoke
brass handle that announces its importance. This gate opens into
the first courtyard and reveals the enormously tall front door. The
narrow, dark and high-ceilinged entry stair then releases you into
light and air in the main public floor. The lane elevation is the
only moment of “exterior architecture” and it is the details that
take the limelight. Triangular notches in the ends of the concrete
roofs could be mistaken for artful quirks, until you realize that they
perform the function of letting excess rainwater overflow from the
box gutters.
Throughout the house, the focus is on details rather than
external views. Materials are highlighted through contrast and
juxtaposition. Finely finished timber is inserted into raw concrete;
a solid block of green marble forms the last stair tread at the
bottom of the elevated walkway. In the ensuite, brown tiles cascade
sensuously over the lip of the custom-designed, box-shaped bath
to merge with the floor. Timber joinery is suspended or hung from
thin black steel supports, delicate against the robust masonry and
concrete structure.
There is one spot with beautiful views – the main bedroom takes
full advantage of its high position, looking down on the roofs of the
other two forms that telescope out from underneath it. These roofs
have been turned into garden “facades,” planted with aloe. In a
happy coincidence, landscape consultant Sue Barnsley’s suggestion
of aloe for the roof gardens recalled the client’s dad, who was an
“aloe hunter” in South Africa, as David puts it.
The last time I reviewed a project by Welsh and Major it was
a house extension composed mostly of reclaimed materials and
superficially nothing like the Annandale House. If there were a
connecting thread between the two, it would be the focus on details,
particularly the juxtaposition of materials: hard against soft, rough
against smooth, new against old. In Annandale, the scenario is
different, but there is a similar ethos and sensibility at work.03 04