House + Cart

House + Cart, a new home designed by Adelaide-based Khab Architects, won a 2019 SA Architecture Award.

Khab originally proposed an extension to an existing cottage in Adelaide, South Australia’s capital city.

It was designed, documented, approved, and ready to build.

But their client then decided that seasonal cracking of the existing cottage was too much to live with.

So, despite the engineer’s structural assurances and with a touch of sentimental regret, the client decided to demolish the original cottage.

So Khab had an extension designed, but no house…. the cart before the house so to speak.

Into the final outcome is built the story of Original Cottage and New Extension and the Original Extension and New Cottage. A story of demolition and dwelling… this house is a new ruin.

‘Ruin’ is hardly a term you’d put in a real estate brochure, but the Ruin is an architectural treasure trove of ideas and engagement. Connecting interior with exterior has become a cliché these days, but it means something much more intense in a ruin – a walled space open to the sky with a tree growing in the middle – are you in or out?

Ruins expose the fabric and structure of the building that is usually concealed. And they release materials and functions from an interior/exterior dichotomy.

This project adopts ruinous qualities, not through disintegration, but via construction.

Courtyards occupy phantom rooms.

And the cross-sections through ‘missing’ walls and roof are presented openly.

Linings are deliberately incomplete to reveal framing and footing.

Suspended over the entry is a fragment of pressed metal ceiling, like a remnant from the original cottage.

Khab found some resonance with Mexican architect Luis Barragán, referenced by a couple of pink walls from his Cuadra San Cristóba.

You can enter a ruin through a window – symmetry is a ghost that still haunts the street frontage.

Fragments of an original central corridor remain, but its division of the house has disintegrated.

The articulation of ‘ornate timber cottage’ and ‘concrete block extension’ remains explicit in materials and in the floor plan.

This house was not cast by a greedy brief.

Its small footprint makes a deliberate sustainability and value statement of quality not quantity.

The bedrooms are only that – a room with a bed and robe.

The bathrooms are crafted but efficient.

Restraint in these spaces and overall house size freed budget for design in carefully scaled living spaces – filled with comfort, surprise, and delight.

The courtyards create dynamic sunlight and an infinitely changing experience of the interior.

Roof, ceiling, and light also change between cottage and extension.

This extension scoops northern sun over the cottage with deep penetration into kitchen and dining.

And the central living room capitalizes on its adjacency to a courtyard for northern solar access.

This new ruin explores deconstruction of a building, but also deconstruction of process and the typology of house and extension.

Sterile new houses rarely come with memory, but a ruin is more of a memory than anything else.

This house balances the two – new, but evoking memory – an award-winning new ruin.

Project Awards

Winner 2019 SA Architecture Award

Project Details

Completion date – 2018

Project Team

Architecture

Khab Architects

Khab Architects is an Adelaide based architecture practice. They are Kirsty Hewitt and Adam Brown, who together run the practice and work on a range of type and scale of projects, from residential to commercial and institutional.

They employ contract staff as required, and operate out of a dynamic studio environment shared with other architects that they collaborate with when relevant for projects.

Their architecture values client individuality, environmental responsibility, material qualities, and spatial beauty, placing high value on developing a strong working relationships on every project between client, architect, and builder.

www.khab.com.au

Photography

Aaron Citti

Aaron Citti is an award winning commercial photographer based in Adelaide, Australia. He is an Associate of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) and specialises in professional commercial, architecture, and interior photography.

His work includes commercial and architecture projects in Australia and overseas, with many of his works published nationally and internationally in London, New York, Indonesia, Fiji, and New Zealand.

www.aaroncitti.com