Katelin Butler: Could you tell us a little about your family and your background?
Andrew Boddam-Wetham: I’m a sign-writer and I split my time between a sign-writing business and creating fine art, murals and other design illustrations.
Amelia Goldsmith: I’ve got a background in working with food, so it was always important that we had a great kitchen in our house. When we started the process with Andrew and Anita of Panov Scott Architects, we only had one child but were hoping for a second. We ended up getting pregnant and Harry, our second child, was due around the same time that the house was due for completion. Harry was late, and so was the house! Now we have Alice (six years) and Harry (eighteen months).
The Victorian terrace house has been opened up, with visual connection between rooms. Artwork: Angela Fox
Image: Brett Boardman
KB: Why did you decide to engage an architect?
AG: I don’t think it was ever really a question. It was always the way we envisioned it would be done.
AB-W: Yes, definitely. My grandfather is an architect in New Zealand and I’ve got other architects in the family, including cousins and uncles. I suppose this helped me to understand what an architect can bring to a project like ours. I believe that you need to have a professional on board to get the result you’re looking for. I don’t think there was another option for us.
AG: When looking for a house to buy, we came across so many “cookie-cutter” houses. We knew that wasn’t what we wanted. We wanted someone with experience to make the most of the house we had.
1 of 16 by Panov Scott Architects.
Image: Brett Boardman
KB: How did you discover Panov Scott Architects?
AG: I’ve got a few friends who work in the industry – both architects and landscape architects. This was before Instagram took off, so it was really useful to have this guidance from friends. It was recommended to me that I look online at the Australian Institute of Architects’ website; I clicked through to the Inner West Council Built Environment Awards’ Marrickville Medal for Conservation and Panov Scott were highly commended for Three by Two House that year [2014]. We looked at Andrew and Anita’s website and we instantly knew that we wanted them to design our house.
AB-W: Andrew and Anita’s practice seems to have gone from strength to strength since then.
KB: How did you prepare for your first meeting with the architects?
AG: We made a Pinterest board and I tore pictures out of magazines and made a folder – but it was pretty basic.
AB-W: We didn’t have a blueprint for what we wanted. We wanted Andrew and Anita to take the lead.
AG: Yes, I think there was only one thing that we pushed back on in the whole project!
A new volume has been added to one of the children’s bedrooms, providing space for a bed and concealed storage.
Image: Brett Boardman
KB: Your brief sounds like it was reasonably open, but what were the key elements that you wanted in your renovated home?
AG: We wanted our house to be airy and light. We also wanted an extra bedroom upstairs and a bathroom downstairs. But that’s about the extent of it!
AB-W: It was a pretty open brief, that’s for sure. It was about letting Andrew and Anita read the situation and where we were at in our lives. We wanted to give the architects a chance to develop their own ideas. They didn’t get any resistance from us – everything always went in the same direction.
AG: We didn’t have an unlimited budget, so that was something that was considered, too.
The owners’ trust in Panov Scott Architects led to surprising and delightful spaces and details.
Image: Brett Boardman
KB: Yes, placing trust in your architect can help to achieve the best outcome. Is the result what you expected?
AB-W: Definitely. The level of detail that’s gone into some of the windows and openings is amazing.
AG: Without an architect, we wouldn’t have anything like what we’ve got today. Nick, our builder, continually referred to Andrew and Anita along the way. I think it’s paramount to have the architects managing the build on site.
KB: Did you have much involvement in the progress on site?
AG: We had meetings on site every week. We were living at my mum’s place at the time. It was quite full-on, especially as I was pregnant!
AB-W: Yes, it was an intense period, but it was also fun. There were testing times, but maybe that’s the beauty of the house being built at the same time as everything else – it’s more rewarding to live in it now.
1 of 16 by Panov Scott Architects.
Image: Brett Boardman
KB: What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of working with an architect? And would you engage an architect again?
AB-W: First and foremost, choose the right architect for you. Research the practice’s recent projects and you’ll straight away get a taste for what it does. The architect’s attitude to clients is hard to gauge at first. You’ve really got to have so much trust in the architect you choose. I do wonder what it’s like for someone who hasn’t had a great experience. It would be testing. I’d do another one tomorrow. I just loved it so much. But I wouldn’t do it with anyone else other than Andrew and Anita. The process should be exciting, fun and creative. Every party should be feeling good about it. Andrew and Anita told us at the start of the process that there is this energy – that you form a bond with your architect and you will always be connected with them through the house. And now, looking back, I can see that’s an accurate description. It’s so good to live in a house that you feel so strongly about.
AG: It’s now been four or five years since we engaged Andrew and Anita to design our home. So the friendship with them has really grown over that time.
AB-W: Also, time is the commodity that you have to be willing to spend. To us, the length of time that the process took doesn’t really matter – the longer it went on, the more developed the design became.
Source
People
Published online: 29 Oct 2021
Words:
Katelin Butler
Images:
Brett Boardman
Issue
Houses, October 2018
