2022 National Award for Residential Architecture – Houses (New)

Jury citation

A delightful exploration into compact suburban infill housing, Jimmy’s House resolves multiple competing site conditions through the considered delivery of a climate-mitigating courtyard plan.

Situated adjacent to an open parkland, the house has two public frontages: one to a side laneway and the other toward a playground on the site’s immediate boundary. Subtle manipulation of the compact plan carefully negotiates the proximity of these public edges, using the shared realm to borrow amenity. Through a series of carefully observed moments, the interior life of the house is subtly expanded out into its neighbourhood. This effort is captured poetically in a series of unconventional and delightful adjacencies.

While the scale of the plan is compact, the house finds release in generous areas of garden across three terraces. Biodiverse and verdant, this landscape not only counterbalances the interior atmosphere of the house, but also subtly reinforces its generous disposition toward the street. Other civic qualities and local traditions are invoked through the form, materiality and fenestration of the project. This is a small house that harbours a wonderful world of ideas and experiences.

— Jimmy’s House was reviewed by Rachael Bernstone in Houses 145. Read the review here.

Project credits

Architect MJA Studio with Studio Roam and Iota; Project team Jimmy Thompson, Amy McDonnell, Sally Weerts; Builder Assemble Building Co.; Structural engineer Atelier JV; Landscape consultants Banksia and Lime, Oak Tree Designs

Jimmy’s House is located in North Perth, Western Australia on the land of the Whadjuk people of the Nyoongar nation.