Starbox Architecture has devised The Storehouse, which aims to amalgamate a standalone dwelling with onsite storage. Looking to house a number of prized possessions of the clientele, the practice has aimed to do away with storing belongings at a dedicated storage space, while ensuring they don’t spill out and into the family home.

The owner of The Storehouse is in possession of a Barcrusher boat, caravan, Dodge RAM, Toyota Landcruiser, BMW M2, a car hoist, two Ducati motorbikes and a staggering 13 mountain and road bikes. While there are a lot of vehicles, selling any of them was not an option. The challenge Starbox was set was to store them under and/or around the newly built residence, ensuring that the storage spaces look and blend in with the home itself. Another adversity faced by the practice was the size of the 628sqm site and the fact that it sits above an adjacent highway and a shared right of way passage with a doctors surgery.

Without being completely obvious, the practice needed space in order to store the vehicles and equipment, as well as space for the home itself. This meant Starbox had to maximise the building envelope and also excavate into the slope of the site. The excavation enabled the installation of a 20 x 9m storage shed to be built to the side and under the rest of the house. The unique shape of the building envelope also created a unique form that Starbox used to their advantage, taming the industrial feel that a shed could potentially invoke. The site also had a substantial fall that we used to hide the size and height of the building.

The home itself features a textural palette of ashen bricks and charcoal window framing, with a stained timber front door creating a contemporary facade. The interior is defined by a number of timber implementations, namely with the joinery, flooring and bathroom vanities. Cream coloured walls in the bathrooms and living spaces as well as warm lighting fixtures and brickwork in the interior forms a contemporary palette that is coupled with a number of openings and windows offering views to the surrounding landscape. The storage space remains concealed by the home, with the majority of the space housed underneath the home.

The Storehouse is living proof that even the smallest of homes can house a number of possessions without having to overlap or come between intimate living spaces. Starbox Architecture have quite clearly done their homework on the site itself, utilising the whole site, under and above ground to ensure its client doesn’t have to travel to an offsite storage space in order to turn the key in a number of their prized possessions.