Allen Jack+Cottier, Belinda Koopman and Vladimir Sitta collaborated to transform the dark rear living spaces and run down garden of a grand two storey High Victorian style residence in Sydney’s inner west.

The house was originally a private zoo, so when work started in 2003 Vladimir Sitta retained and reused building fabric remnants to construct a “Garden of Ghosts” with a polished concrete pool ‘fenced’ by a fish skeleton vitrine and plant filled moat.

Over time, quirky layers created a rich and magical context in which we were asked to provide a dining area and a bedroom with ensuite, while solving the problem of lack of winter light to the formal living spaces, caused by an existing ’lean to’ verandah.
We conceived a double volume glass loggia that would be sheltered on the west by an existing cypress stand to create a useable outdoor area in a way that responded to the grand scale of the existing building and was appropriate to the conservation area.
The loggia and new rooms are designed to exploit the ambiguities between what is inside and what is outside with a dramatic external steel mesh curtain shading the whole north-west façade, which operates to transform the loggia and garden spaces for different family functions.