East Corrimal House

East Corrimal House is a built project that investigated how with minor renovations a suburban home's relation to the site, an isolated object on the suburban block, could be inverted. The project's stated parameters were a client who aspired to a new 'lifestyle' that allowed a fluidity of living between the interior and the exterior and a very small budget. The investigation the project prompted was to question if there an edit could be applied to the typical 1970s suburban single brick house - raised up uncomfortably from the site, with little minimal eaves and ad-hoc outbuildings - that could provide a model of inversion between the object and the field and answer new aspirations for suburban housing, a modest alternative to the 'McMansion' typology. Extensions to the existing building were restrained - a two meter wide box running the length of the rear of the building and sliding in under the existing eave allowed for a rationalisation of existing planning with open plan living spaces rather than dedicated rooms and a simple and generous aperture to the rear garden. The existing ad hoc dwellings were rationalised and re-clad. The main architectural gesture was a new roof to the Southern side of the property, giving new spatiality to these buildings and linking them. A new deck steps and negotiates the level changes. Courtyard walls to the street create private outdoor spaces from the bedrooms. Through minimal changes a new territory is created at the perimeter of the existing building, a space thickened, a threshold that negotiated the territory between the interior and the exterior