Tree is leaf and leaf is tree—house is city and city is house—a tree is a tree but is also a huge leaf—a leaf is a leaf but is also a tiny tree—a city is not a city unless it is also a huge house—a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city.

Aldo Van Eyck, 1962

At 19 Waterloo Street Surry Hills, we indeed encounter a tiny city. This compact site holds within it’s 89 sq.m footprint a dwelling, shop and apartment. This is, by any definition, fine grain, taking the characteristic elements of city-making employed by SJB and distilling these into a precious jewel of urban life.

Considering projects such as the seminal Quay Quarter Lanes project (02); a generous model of collaborative urbanism where SJB designed one keynote building while acting as coordinating architect for the remainder; a number of characteristic elements recur: the breaking of the project into multiple discrete elements, each with a distinct materiality and expression; an intense and coordinated approach to alignments of massing, both horizontal and vertical; and a leveraging of the non-singular configuration to create intense spatial moments that would not occur through a consolidated massing.

As we move through, we discuss the neglected notion of problem / solution logic; the idea that architecture might be grounded in identification of a problem, with a design solution generated explicitly in response. Modernism, indeed across architecture and associated disciplines, pursued an alignment of ‘functional requirements’ (what the design must achieve) and ‘design parameters’ (the elements it employs to achieve it), ideally achieving a 1:1 alignment whereby there is no redundant content; in favour of efficiency. The problem with this approach is that it tended to omit the many aspects that make life worth living, transcending the practical aspects of daily life to discover something beyond basic necessity.

‘Architects forgot about joy for fifty years’, notes the Project Architect, Adam Haddow. Reconciling this with the architect’s earlier affirmation of problem / solution logic, the thought process begins to reveal itself, a kind of expanded definition of the functional requirements of living to encompass joy, playfulness, fun, memory, humour, affection and community. Put another way, while the functional requirements of dwelling must be addressed, this is achieved in a manner that optimises joy. Some examples will attempt to illustrate this.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the dwelling is the apparently chaotic and exuberant configuration of openings (03). A series of fourteen unique openings are present on the main northern façade alone, perhaps a response to the necessary rationalisation of window and door types on multi-residential projects; of which the architect is an expert. Rather than a wilful composition, this is a result of rigorous consideration of the capacity for each opening to enhance it’s room; the arched kitchen window perfectly framing an arched window to the neighbouring building across the lane, the axial viewpoint controlled by virtue of the perpendicular kitchen aisle; the vertically-proportioned living room window that emphasises the height of the interior volume while introducing a vibrant red through the sunlit awning; and a tiny square window at floor level from which Eric, the owners' tiny dog, can sit in the sun and watch the street, a thoughtful affordance given all other windows are raised above ground to preserve privacy. Accordingly, the varied exterior is derived directly from attention to the specificity of each opening. Among other possibilities, it suggests the potential of introducing a few more performative window types into multi-residential expression. Through this functional grounding, the approach to fenestration contrasts to other examples of distributed openings such as Sou Fujimoto’s House N or Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s Poli House.

Through the directness of expression, these projects are apparently more functional than 19 Waterloo Street, yet on closer inspection it appears they are actually less so, and are instead compositionally-driven to achieve a shifting distribution of openings and a suppression of the grid. At 19 Waterloo Street, composition is relegated to resultant status, making it all the more unlikely and intriguing; a reminder that depth in a primary element is achieved by attending to the secondary elements of which it is comprised - a lesson repeated through an architectural career.

A result of the varied external configuration is that the interior spatial arrangement (04) is unclear; obscured by openings that are inconsistently located in relation to floor, ceiling and internal walls, sometimes shifted to edges to wash the adjacent surfaces and sometimes centralised as a standalone feature, the architect’s beloved ‘punched opening’. This obfuscation affords a kind of privacy, whereby the patterns of the life playing out inside are illegible from the exterior, while being located immediately adjacent to the street. Through these deliberate strategies, the necessary requirements of privacy, outlook and natural light are achieved, but in a manner that is intensely playful.

Such tactics of discretion are extended through the arrangement of outdoor areas. On the main living level, a small courtyard is hidden behind a masonry shaft, capped by a planter and glazing, seemingly existing solely to draw golden light into the study below in a nod to Barragan (05). Not apparent from the street, this courtyard serves to extend the visual domain of the living space, the cooling quality of the pocket garden enhanced by the green tone of the rear wall, in turn the rear façade of the corner building - an unexpected and performative benefit of its colour (06).

The project can be readily considered as a piece of built research, exploring the limitations of smallness, seeking to identify the minimum plausible spatial dimensions and a raft of strategies in response to the spatial constraint. The normative 900mm minimum hallway width is reduced to 600mm, a dimension that on paper sounds ludicrous but experientially is a delight, a sensation of moving through fitted space. Passing requires courtesy, an unlikely connection between civility and constraint.

The stair also observes this 600mm width (07). The decision to configure it as a switchback has multiple benefits over the default stacked linear configuration, preserving room width and  introducing the opportunity for split levels. The front and rear landings are activated as circulation, toggling from front to rear where appropriate to establish a more public route on the living level and a more private route on the upper level, serving bedroom and ensuite.

A strategy of programmatic distribution is employed in response to smallness. Cooking occurs across the house, extending from the compact kitchen to also utilise a barbeque in the side courtyard and a smoker on the roof. This means the activity of cooking is overlaid on multiple spaces, coexisting with other uses and enabled by the temporal nature of the task.

Similarly, a series of gardens are distributed throughout, continuing a collaboration with Tom Smith from Dangar Barin Smith that bears lineage to the owners’ previous dwelling; the Redfern apartment. In the absence of lateral dimensions, trees become key landscape elements. A tree fern relieves the living room, exploiting the shaded location and striving upward for sunlight, it’s shifting trunk contrasting to the precise rectilinear geometry of the room. The soil depth for a Bottle Tree on the roof is achieved by mounding, which in turn creates a small lawn hill on which to recline. In this house we might iterate Aldo Van Eyck’s proposition that ‘leaf is tree’ and ‘city is house’ to suggest that ‘tree is house’.

The presence of landscape is extended through an artwork; Eora, by the late Nicholas Harding (08). Commissioned prior to the design of the house and revealing the couple’s interest in contemporary art, the work depicts the endemic landscape that would have existed on the site prior to colonisation. The painting occupies the full length of the living room, activating it as expansive panorama and bestowing an honorific quality on the work.

More broadly, the project seems imbued with the multi-disciplinary skill-set of SJB; a spectrum that spans across planning, architecture and interiors. If not through direct input, then by their presence as the milieu of the architect, the design strategies of these allied disciplines are employed, the project comprehensively addressing critical questions from the scale of the city to the design of a custom tap.

Previous writers have questioned how this idiosyncratic home might work for a family, with toddlers’ toys strewn across the living room. I offer my personal interpretation, which is that my four and seven-year-old would find it a wonderland, where space is intensely appreciated and joy is expressed as a value. Functionally, there are innumerable opportunities to devise monster truck routes, places to imaginatively reconstruct a day at the beach, and a compartmentalised plan that enables play to be unleashed in one area while preserving a degree of tranquillity in the remainder.

Beyond the physical interpretation of a city as a grouping of buildings and associated spaces, the project channels the richness and diversity that characterises a city. In contrast to natural settings, where one may go to find retreat from the particular intensity of the city, this project celebrates contrast, juxtaposition and unlikely combinations. Through this, the house reveals something of the nature of the city, an interplay of causal and non-causal relationships. Natural settings, by contrast, are defined by their absolute causality.

This is a rigorous project, whereby deep understanding from complex city-making projects is condensed into a tiny inner-city site, without loss of skill or invention, perhaps an inverse relationship through necessity, and enabled through an expanded notion of functional requirements to accommodate life.

This article was originally published in AMAG LB23.

* The title is borrowed from a recent book by Australian writer Holly Ringland.

01, 03, 05-08 - Photographs copyright Anson Smart.

02 - Photograph copyright Tom Ferguson.

04 - Section, prepared by SJB.

Project Credits:

Architect - Adam Haddow and Stewart Cowan, SJB

Contractor - Promena Projects

Landscape - Dangar Barin Smith

Artists - Nicholas Harding, Mika Utzon-Popov, Kate Bergin

Structural Engineer - Van der Meer

Bricks - Krause Bricks