The Brisbane investment property that an architect fell head over heels for
The traditional street facade of Albert Villa in Petrie Terrace, Brisbane. Photo: Alicia Taylor
Jenny Brown Dec 12, 2019
While designing the renovation and expanded layout for what was supposed to become an investment property, architect Terry McQuillan and his interior designer wife, Charlie, fell in love with their vision.
So much so, they decided to up sticks from their home on a roomy garden block and relocate across town to one of Brisbane's most grittily interesting inner suburbs.
The little wooden Queenslander they'd found was almost as old as the 1880s subdivision of Petrie Terrace on the hill above Brisbane's CBD. Miraculously it was in pretty good condition.
"A great example of an old Queenslander", says McQuillan, director of bureau proberts. "The scale was just right".
The visual transition from old to new at Albert Villa, Petrie Terrace, Brisbane. Photo: Alicia Taylor
The steep block with three street and lane frontages and some overlooking issues from surrounding flats and businesses was, however, very tight.
At 236 square metres, McQuillan was aware that unless he could somehow insert greenery and privacy, he'd suffer serious natural world deprivation.
"Gardens are really important for me for relaxing because of their soft shapes", he says. "They are such a contrast to built form. We wanted a garden that was part of the house".
The true meaning of indoor-outdoor lifestyle in the sub-tropics, with greenery and privacy. Photo: Alicia Taylor
In making Albert Villa, a radically bifurcated old/new, black/white three-bedroom house with three distinct living spaces – including one with pool table and fireplace in the original house's undercroft – the architect so seamlessly integrated garden rooms into the scheme that the lawn behind the rear living pavilion looks as if it might be vacuumed rather than mown.
But McQuillan mows it and while doing so can chat with passers-by and enjoy views out to Mt Coot-tha that are framed to edit out the close neighbourhood rooftops.
The outlook from the upper-level main suite that sits beneath part of the apparently random planes of the roof of the contemporary black extension is even more expansive.
It's not hard to see why architect Terry McQuillan and his interior designer wife Charlie fell so hard for their investment property at Petrie Terrace, in Brisbane's CBD fringe. Photo: Alicia Taylor
The various folds in the roof fold are in strategic places for privacy. "And like a blinker, they also orient the eye towards the views". On the side street, the dark weatherboard cladding shapes up to a gable of Victorian proportions.
That roofscape is one of many subtle devices of relationship by which a small, sweet and starkly white-painted Queenslander – that is, in effect, separated from the new amenity by a slither of open sky – "is knitted together", despite the substantial stylistic differences and the 1.2-metre drop between the two buildings.
Many of the lines of the new pavilion take their cues and proportions from the 19th-century house. The louvred bank of black windows allows the slim galley kitchen beside the back garden to be opened to the street as much or as little as desired. The windows precisely follow the elevations of the white house's return verandah.
It was a complete flip in the extension of this Brisbane architect's inner-city home. Photo: Alicia Taylor
The incredible variability of Albert Villa's functionality and the way it exploits that facility of southern Queensland housing that allows them to be opened to the elements as long as there is an adequate overhead canopy for sudden summer deluges has the aim of capturing breezes, McQuillan explains.
"To get as much openness in Brisbane is very important, and especially in Petrie Terrace where the afternoon breezes can be really good".
In the scant months of a Brisbane winter, there are glass doors that slide to enclose the pavilion. But if that's not enough, there is always the option of retreating into the living room in the old house. An even cosier possibility is withdrawing to the undercroft where the fireplace suggests the perfect venue to enjoy a glass of red.
In a house on such a tiny block, the architect has created so many spatial variations that visitors are continually expressing "surprise at how big it is, and how much is going on inside".
www.bureauproberts.com.au
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