Gantry House is a project to extend a sweet, but cramped, weatherboard cottage to accommodate a multi-generational family of 7 (+ 2 dogs) and their 21st century lives. 

The house is robust and easy going with room to work (both parents work from home) and room to live with space to be together, to be by yourself and to share with family + friends. 

Designed as a house/warehouse/workshop, this house is made for a family that loves ‘doing’ (cooking, gardening, building) and collecting (pot plants, toys + dogs, art, food, + op-shop treasures). Spaces and nooks throughout the house provide opportunities to use + see the family’s favourite things and cater for life that flows constantly from house to garden and back again.

Primary construction is reverse brick veneer so the old house’s weatherboard character is retained externally while the interior enjoys beautiful variegated skins of recycled bricks alongside lively, colourful elements such as the orange trusses and kitchen stove, and sky-blue plywood joinery.

This house is a gift by a builder to his family so the construction of the house itself is a source of enjoyment and demonstrates the skills of all the people who built it - including the family themselves - and their highly skilled tradie friends.

Photographs | Tatjana Plitt

DESIGN TEAM:

Architect | Fooi-Ling Khoo + Jack Wilkinson
Interior Design | Fooi-Ling Khoo + Jack Wilkinson
Engineer | Structural Edge Consulting Engineers
Building Surveyor | Anthony Middling & Associates

CONSTRUCTION TEAM:

Builder | Complete Builders Insight
Doors + Windows | Aspect Windows
Roofing + Cladding | JTK Metalcraft
Steel Trusses | MKM Structural Steel
Perforated Steelwork | Star Sheet Metal
Joinery | Luna Joinery
Tiling | Synergy Tiling
Electrical | Linked Electrical Services