ZZ Top House, Sydney Real Estate, NSW Homes, Australia Building Design Images
ZZ Top House in McMahons Point
16 May 2022
Design: CplusC
Location: McMahons Point, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Photos: Murray Fredericks and Michael Lassman
ZZ Top House, NSW
In ZZ Top House, it?s hard to tell if you?re inside or out. The topsy-turvy design deliberately confounds perspective by bringing in the outdoors. Natural light pours into the sky-high living spaces through zigzagging louvres and skylights to create a captivating inside world where the home?s beautiful details are the view.

The site

How do you create visual interest inside an unusually long and inward-looking site with zero outlook bounded by two warehouses" That was the challenge in updating this dual-frontage Victorian terrace house in McMahon?s Point, Sydney. Inspired by two ideas, the geode and the zigzag, architects CplusC designed a soaring yet approachable living space that delights the eye without views to the outside.
A living geode

With no outlook to work with, CplusC?s design for ZZ Top House takes cues from 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 and the outdoors to this secret world, creating a beautiful symphony of light and shade nuanced by season and time of day. An accordion ...