Northcote House / LLDS

LLDS has re-conceptualised the Victorian terrace typology in response to the existing urban context to create a compact inner-city house in Melbourne, Australia. Sited on a narrow plot orientated east-west, 22m long and 4.6m wide, the main design move was to elevate the ground to form a roof garden to address the lack of garden spaces. The brown roof supports local ecology in an urban context. Below the free-form timber structure is a hall-like room with a kitchen, dining room, and entrance veranda reminiscent of the neighbourhood's large factory lofts and Victorian church halls. The highly textured concrete internal wall provides thermal mass and improves the dining room's acoustics by reducing the flutter echo effect caused by the parallel boundary walls.