From the architect:

Pairing Edwardian elegance with contemporary chic. This single-storey late Edwardian weatherboard villa underwent a significant refurbishment and extension, with Evissa at the helm.

In renovating Austin House, preserving the authenticity of the building fabric and the originality of the materials found to be embodied within the context, became an integral part of the scope.

The cultural significance of the existing Edwardian house is embodied in the place itself, its fabric, its setting.

The structural updates included releveling and restumping the house, insulating the walls, floors and ceilings, removing, re-laying and levelling the Baltic pine floorboards, re-installing the weatherboards and replacing the Terracotta roof tiles with like for like material.

The building fabric for the two-storey addition was delivered using SIPs. Amongst the other benefits that SIPs come with, reducing the construction waste and building times were only two important aspects of the brief.

The contemporary addition is representative for its time and creates a strong dialog with the Edwardian values, bringing a clear style demarcation between the two different centuries. While structural updates, material refurbishment and well insulating levels were achieved, the authenticity of the building fabric was fully preserved.

The overarching sustainability ideas were extracted from the Passivhaus Design principles, aiming for a comfortable environment and good indoor air quality levels.