Acute House, Melbourne Residence, Australian Property, Building Architecture, Images
Acute House in Melbourne
Residential Development, Australia – design by OOF! Architecture
21 Nov 2016
Acute House
Design: OOF! Architecture
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Acute House

Acute House is the transformation of a ‘renovator’s nightmare’ into a compact 21st century family home. The severe limitations of a tiny, very triangular site and the demanding heritage context have resulted in a pointy new wedge of house that is designed to exploit its problems.

The original and extremely decrepit, Victorian weatherboard cottage had become impossible to inhabit but was well loved by the neighbourhood as well as its new owners.
We tried to retain its weathered character by re-using as much original fabric as possible from warped weatherboards and fence palings to random accumulations such as door knobs, vents and street numbers. Like fragile museum artefacts, these were carefully removed, labelled, stored and re-installed in their original location on a new mount that not only highlights their charms by contrast but allows the house to live again in a new way.

Tight

To take advantage of the opportunities of such an unusual site, the geometry required an adjustment to the layout and lifestyle expectations of a conventional family house. Multiple levels were required to accommodate the basic space needs of a family home and these were accommodated where site geomet...