2020 National Architecture Awards: The Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture – Houses (New)

Jury citation

The outskirts of our major regional centres aren’t often the places we think of for compelling architecture. East Street is a clear exception.

This modest single-storey dwelling is both evocative and finely crafted. Responsive to its sloping site, which falls away from the street toward the north, the design builds on a long legacy of modernist traditions, yet with a twist. A series of carefully configured cellular volumetric elements offers both refuge and connectedness to adjacent spaces through cleverly organized sliding doors. These warm and restful spaces are enhanced by a restrained palette of darkly stained plywood, raked cement-sheet ceilings and matt sheened concrete floors.

The antithesis of the “big is better” credo, the efficient footprint contains everything and then some. The key contained volumes hold the important spaces of repose: bedroom, study and services spaces. The places of prospect and views are orientated to both the north-west and south-east corners, providing opportunities for gathering, breeze and sleep outs, particularly as the solar path switches across the site throughout the day and seasons of the year. Following the topography, the plan is split-level, providing a generous seating ledge between living areas and terrace. The lack of adornment grants a backdrop to which the client has brought their own personality, through artwork and the ephemera of life. However, the design also holds refined details and moments of surprise, with not a millimetre of space wasted.

East Street is further enhanced by its consideration of climate, its response to a bushfire-prone context, and the desire to capture the farm-like setting and superb mountain ranges in the distance. The characteristics embedded throughout demonstrate a generosity of spirit that remains ever mindful of the belief in just enough and no more than necessary.

Project credits

Architect Kerstin Thompson Architects; Project team Kerstin Thompson, Lynn Chew, William Samuels; Builder Scott James Builder; Quantity surveyor Plan Cost Australia; Building surveyor MBA Building Services; Structural and civil engineers Perrett Simpson; ESD consultant Energy Lab.

East Street is located in East Albury, New South Wales, on the land of the Wiradjuri people.