Colum Colfer Architect

Canterbury Extension + Pool

The pool and spa, timber deck along one side and battened screens above the boundary

The front of the house is left alone. Verandah, entry, three bedrooms, the formal living room: all of it stays where a house of this age put it, cast iron lacework and all. Everything new happens behind, in a rear wing holding the kitchen, dining and living, with an office off the side and the laundry and bathroom caught on the way through.

The back of the block is given over to the water. A rendered wall runs down one boundary and battened timber screens sit above the palings on the other, so the pool is enclosed on both long sides without a fence doing the talking. Between the house and the wall the plan runs covered deck, then open deck, then terrace, then the pool with the spa at the near end.

The join is where the interest is. Walk in the original front door, down the hall, and the floor steps up into rooms that are plainly newer, and then straight out at the water through a glazed wall the width of the room. From the dining table you look the length of the pool. That is what decided where the glazing went.

Location
Canterbury, Victoria
Project Type
Extension and pool
Scope
Rear wing, covered deck, pool and spa
The original front of the house, white weatherboard and cast iron lacework under a crepe myrtle The hall in the new work, looking back up the steps to the original stained glass front door The dining table looking the length of the pool through full-height sliding doors Living and dining at the rear, sliding doors out to the deck and the battened screens The kitchen, white joinery and a stone bench under a stainless hood The sitting room with its fireplace set into a plain rendered chimney breast The pool against the rendered boundary wall, with the neighbouring slate gable beyond Bathroom: white tile, a frameless screen and a window onto the neighbouring roofs Presentation sheet: section through the house and a numbered plan of the whole site

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