AN AWARD winning house in Brisbane could be the answer to increasing density in our inner-city suburbs without destroying character.
The One Room Tower is a creative extension built next to a character home in Brisbane’s West End.
The clever design and creative use of the small amount of space resulted in the team behind it winning the 2018 Brisbane House of the Year at the Australia Institute of Architects’ 2018 Queensland Regional Architecture Awards.
The design and construction was the work of researchers and alumni from UQ Architecture and Phorm architecture+design.
Associate professor at University of Queensland Antony Moulis said creative solutions would be needed as more people move to the inner-city.
“We call it an infill development, it is about finding these spaces in the city where elements can be added in discreet ways,” Mr Moulis said.
It was built to the side of a corner block home in Brisbane’s West End on an interwar period house that is protected by a character overlay.
The ‘One room’ design is an open layout so that people can find many different uses for the space to suit their needs.
“It could be a studio, it could be a recreational space, it could be a home office,” he said.
While there are protections on the development on many historic inner city homes in Australia’s capital cities, many historic Queenslander homes have been raised up to increase space.
While this might be allowed even under restrictive protections and character overlays, he said it changed the look of historic homes.
“What the raising of the house does is it tends to drastically change the form of the house and create a full two storey home,” he said.
“It is not necessarily keeping the character of the Queenslander house.”
The infill developments could be used as a way to increase the space on a property, while still keeping historic homes in their original form.
The One Room Tower was built last year and since its construction it has been used to inspire builders and architects on the possibilities in the inner city.
(Photos courtesy of Christopher-Frederick-Jones)
