Now their kids are grown, CplusC clients Mat and Liz wanted to downsize closer to the city. Having found the perfect property to develop, they approached CplusC to create a home that fits them in every way. Their vision was for ample space for family members to entertain, play mahjong and enjoy quiet time together and apart. Avid scuba divers, they needed an area to store and clean their gear. Liz is a geologist, and the couple appreciates natural and exposed materials, such as timber and raw concrete. Both were excited to display memorabilia that told the story of their family. Initially, they didn’t plan to alter the existing three upstairs bedrooms and bathroom, which they reserved for their one child still at home and two independent children should they want to return. Once things got underway, the couple decided to renovate these spaces too.
The project scope was alterations and additions to a grand dual-frontage Victorian terrace house built in 1884 in McMahon’s Point. On an unusually long block with front and rear access, the site is in a light industrial zone with a warehouse on either side, one of them a sound recording studio. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a bathroom. At the rear was a semi-detached studio apartment over a double garage providing parking for four cars. Notably, the site offers little outlook or views.
Responding to the unusually long and inward-looking site, the CplusC team wanted to create approachable spaces that delight the eye all on their own, without needing views to the outside. Principal architect Clinton Cole and project architect Carmen Chan created a design concept inspired by two ideas: the zigzag and the geode.
Clinton explains: “The site is extraordinarily deep and our concept for it was expansive, with a dramatic cathedral ceiling 5.2 to 5.8 metres high. To stop it from feeling too vast and drawn out, we looked for ways to compress the space. We settled on an accordion concept to distract the eye and connect all the living spaces while keeping them distinct. It’s expressed as a zigzag motif which you see in the angled louvres, the brickwork, the brass floor detail and the custom kitchen bench.”
Their design for the four-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom home retained the entire original terrace house at the rear ground level and turned most of the ground floor into a massive living area flowing from inside to out. The entrance was moved to the side, giving instant access to the living spaces. At entry level are the kitchen and dining rooms, with lofty louvres, skylights and vertical lighting cavities emphasising the big airy spaces. One level down, the living area transitions to the undercover outside living space and garden. Everywhere, windows and open spaces bring the outdoors in, creating abundant visual interest inside the inward-looking house.
“We took inspiration from geodes, which are plain old rocks that if you crack them open contain extravagant inside worlds of light and shape and colour,” Clinton says. “The detailing in ZZ Top House creates the outlook: the zigzag motif, the outside-inside feeling, the louvred windows and the interplay of light and shade. They all work together to make an ever-changing spectacle inside the home.”
When Liz and Mat saw the design they were all in. Liz said: “Clinton and the team listened and incorporated the things we wanted with a unique, spectacular interpretation. They gave us something we could never have dreamt up ourselves.”
Mat agrees. “The design blew us away. CplusC melded old and new to create something very unique. In just one example, their idea of changing the traditional entry point from the front to the side really shifts the experience of the space. We hadn’t remotely considered this but absolutely love the impact it has.”
One of CplusC’s transformative ideas was moving the front façade entrance to the side, reducing the perceived length of the home and using the normally wasted space of the side entry path more effectively. “The house opens around you the instant you enter. There’s no trekking down a corridor past bedrooms to get to the living spaces,” Clinton says. “This creates an arresting experience for everyone who walks in.”
The CplusC construction team took pains to refine every detail. When they couldn’t source the right wine rack for the couple’s wine collection, they created one for them.
Liz says: “I love when someone we know walks through the front door for the first time, watching the look on their face as they take it all in. I know what they’re seeing as I see it every day: the way the light and shadows play on the surfaces, such as our big brick dining wall and the floor, and vary with the day, the weather and the season. The way all the spaces work individually and as part of a whole.”
With no outlook to work with, CplusC’s design for ZZ Top House is inspired by geodes, rocks that contain hollow cavities lined with jagged crystals to create dazzling inner worlds. In the same way, the home opens from an unassuming exterior to reveal a fascinating space inside. Bold 3.8-metre-high louvres and skylights admit light to this secret world, creating a beautiful symphony of light and shade nuanced by season and time of day. An accordion design compresses and connects the vast spaces, wittily expressed by a recurring zigzag motif explored in the floors, the louvred windows and even the kitchen bench.
Liz says: “The first time I walked into our finished home, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. It was a massive thrill. Now, seeing the soaring space and the way it all works so beautifully is an amazing combo of ‘coming home’ and ‘wow’!”
Despite difficult site access, the CplusC construction team worked ahead of schedule. With a clearway out front, parking was tough, and flatbed delivery trucks could not negotiate a tight corner to reach the site at the rear. Construction equipment and materials were loaded from a truck onto a trolley and manoeuvred painstakingly down a pathway 900 millimetres wide. A 6.8-metre length of structural steel for the kitchen beam had to be cut up and rolled in piece by piece.
Almost 3 metres above the kitchen and supported by a massive steel beam, the original rendered rear terrace wall forms a striking setting for family life. Scooped out of it is a sleek and streamlined kitchen with a custom wine fridge, cleverly concealed appliances, a Zip tap, tailored storage for vinegar and oils and a custom-cut zigzag marble and timber bench.
The kitchen, dining and living areas were worked into an open, warm and interconnected space that reflects the spontaneous and gregarious life of the family. It’s the perfect setting for frequent gatherings, with an open galley style kitchen with generous bench widths and an island bench to gather and chat, plus a compact guest toilet ingeniously built under the stairs. Throughout, custom joinery showcases the family’s prized memorabilia, including oars, degrees and family relics from WWII. Beautiful natural light illuminates all the rooms from the louvres and skylights.
CplusC reduced the project’s embodied energy by using recycled floorboards and dry-pressed bricks and restoring rather than replacing the original heritage features, such as the front balcony, balustrade, locks, cornices, gutters, downpipes, boundary walls, windows and doors. This principle of re-use helps the additions and alterations harmonise with the original building and creates an endlessly interesting interior – for example, the feature wall above the dining table is the outside wall of the original house, and a preserved back terrace balcony now looks into the indoor dining space, once the side courtyard.
CplusC is renowned for taking an integrated sustainability perspective, and ZZ Top House is no different. It features a 10kWhr solar system supported by Tesla battery storage, enabling near zero electricity bills throughout the year. The design creates a comfortable environment to minimise the need for heating and cooling by optimising cross ventilation, thermal mass, insulation and passive solar strategies.
The house deliberately confounds perspective. It feels like you’re outside.
“We called it ZZ Top House because of the zigzag motif – also because it felt fun and irreverent and a little bit rock and roll to turn the house on its head and create this outside-inside feeling that makes you question where you are,” Clinton says.
Mat enjoys watching guests grappling with what they see. “Their eyes widen, their mouths open and they gaze up, trying to figure out if they’re inside or outside – they’re inside, of course.”
A generous covered living space extends the social spaces of the home into the outdoors, with a barbecue area, comfortable seating and a 2.6-metre-long dining table ready for spontaneous gatherings. Beyond that lies a low-maintenance garden with a firepit and custom benches – the perfect place to enjoy an illuminated mural projected onto the massive warehouse wall by night.
The design dissolves the feeling of being inside in several ways. External elements are used inside, and the outdoors is featured everywhere through ample use of glass. These outdoor reference points conspire with the extraordinary volume of the living spaces to create a light and open feeling. For Mat and Liz, who love the great outdoors, it’s like living outside.
Photographs by Murray Fredericks and Michael Lassman
Project team
Clinton Cole – Architect + Builder
Carmen Chan – Project Architect
Barry Bradley – Foreman
Nathan Krstevski – Carpenter
Christina Cheng – Project Manager
Matt Reid – Architectural Assistant
Consultants and subcontractors
Structural Engineer – Partridge
Plumbing – JH Gordon
Electrical – D2E
Doors & Windows – Windoor
Joinery – SKC
Painting – Orange Painting
Bricks – Brazil Construction
Glazing – Balmain Glass
Structural Steel – Tenze
Roofing – Flash Metal Roofing
Setting & Plaster Works – Mick Williams Plastering
Landscaping – Bell Landscapes