Andrew Burges Architects created Bismarck House holiday home in the Sydney suburb of Bondi to showcase the work of its landscape architect client.
The house, which has been shortlisted in the house interior, residential rebirth, and urban house categories for the Dezeen Awards 2020, was designed for Will Dangar of landscape practice Dangar Barin Smith to be noticeably different from the sounding residential neighbourhood.
Top: Reused bricks from the existing building form a boundary wall. Above: Bismarck House runs along a laneway
"Bondi is a popular coastal place set within beautiful geography, but marked with an agglomeration of poor quality building stock," Andrew Burges Architects founder Andrew Burges told Dezeeen.
"The idea was that the house would function primarily as a site for holiday rentals, while also demonstrating the capacity of our client's construction and landscape design companies." A screen in perforated aluminium sheet decorates the exterior
The site is located on a lane that serves shops and cafes on the Bondi Road leading to Bondi Beach, and held a single-storey building that didn't take full advantage of the sun and air.
Andrew Burges Architects kept the front room and porch of the existing house and worked within the envelope of that space, but the rest of the original building was demolished with the bricks cleaned and reused for the new, two-storey construction.
"We were interested in the laneway for its potential for...