The extension and renovation of a 1940s home by Simon Pendal Architect is a surprise in Perth’s sprawling suburbs
Commended in the 2021 AR House awards: read about the full shortlist here
Perth is a relatively new city that rivals Los Angeles for car dependency and urban sprawl; most homes are the result of house and land packages that continually extend the city’s outer reaches. Out on the fringes, modest blocks are dominated by large houses that pay little attention to climate, context or culture. Usually, all traces of biodiversity and history are erased from housing sites; all of the trees, vegetation and topographical features are razed to create a flat tabula rasa for construction to commence.
It wasn’t always this way. Before British settlers arrived in 1829, Perth was home to the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation. The Beaconsfield House by Simon Pendal, in a suburb of Fremantle, is about 20km south-west of Perth’s city centre and 3km inland from the Indian Ocean. It sits within the Aboriginal cultural region of Beeliar, which has been continuously occupied for more than 50,000 years. Noongar people observe six distinct seasons, which traditionally dictated patterns of movement across Country and cyclical activities that sustained culture for millennia. At the time of visiting this house, it was Kambarang – in October and November – when wildflowers bloom and new birds are born. Birak follows in December and January, when pre-colonial Noongar families moved together along the coast, ahead of Bunuru – the hot season of February and March, a time for fishing and gathering coastal delicacies to eat.
Across Perth – and particularly Fremantle – there is a growing awareness of Aboriginal culture and heritage (which was actively suppressed for many decades), especially in relation to the six seasons. Now, efforts are under way to better understand and engage with this long-standing knowledge about how to occupy the land, without causing further damage and destruction to its fragile ecosystems. These questions have become increasingly important to Pendal, who acknowledges ‘our need to take care of this place – that we have completely trashed in 200 years’. According to the architect, the Beaconsfield House ‘is very much about how we can reacquaint ourselves with the natural world: the cycles in the seasons, the times
of day, the ebb and flow of breezes’.
Artists Jurek and Michele moved into the house in the 1990s, when it was a ‘shell’ according to Michele, and they raised their two children in its run-down spaces. Despite its poor condition, the timber cottage was the scene of many joyous gatherings of friends, family and fellow artists. Over nearly 20 years, the couple gradually upgraded the house – a louvred screen for the veranda and enlarged front windows by architect Stephen Neille – followed by conversations for a larger-scale renovation at the rear with both Neille and Pendal. Part way through that process, Neille moved away, and Pendal took over as lead architect. Once the design was complete and approved to build, the couple put the project on hold for several years. The project’s long gestation process was enhanced by Jurek and Michele’s intimate involvement, providing ‘an artistic or spatial base’ for the project. Many models were produced in the early stages, to develop the main concept and forms, and how they should fit with the cottage.
The final scheme retained the original front five rooms – one bedroom was repurposed as a laundry and bathroom – while a new courtyard denotes the space between old and new. The new 76m2 brick extension at the rear hugs the southern boundary, bringing northern light deep into the living space in winter. Of the added spaces, a multiuse living room is the largest. Jurek and Michele use this room in a range of different ways: every morning, they rise at 5am and sit and talk over coffee as the sun rises, before they head out to work. It’s large enough to accommodate significant gatherings, and it is used as studio and gallery space, or to lay out new work ahead of exhibitions.
The importance of connections to the outdoors is apparent, especially in this room, opening to the garden along one edge and stepping up the block towards the rear, reflecting the sloping contours outside.
Even with the new extension, the site is still 65 per cent garden and 35 per cent house: unusual in Perth.
The dining room and this large room are connected by a narrow, angled link which mimics the experience of transitioning from a sunny street into the compressed entry of a darkened church, which then gives way to the nave, where soaring ceilings inspire deep reflection. A round skylight near the living room’s southern edge delivers an ecclesiastical shaft of light that illuminates the curved brick wall, softening its cave-like appearance. The most surprising flourish in the big room is the vaulted ceiling; this ‘portal that has the sense of the infinite about it’, in Pendal’s words, is painted in Yves Klein blue – Jurek’s choice – drawing the eye upwards, towards the sky.
The dining room boasts a scooped ceiling that opens up to the east via an upper section of perforated brickwork in the double-height wall. It casts changing patterns of light across the room throughout the day and across the year. The new additions were conceived as ‘a series of chambers that address the morning sun’.
‘The link between dining room and living room mimics the experience of transitioning from a sunny street into the compressed entry of a darkened church’
There are practical considerations in the living room, too: a narrow, tall window punctuates the western wall and funnels sea breezes through this space near the back of the site, and the simple opening on the northern edge is protected by lockable security screens, thereby excluding intruders and insects, and enabling night-purging during the warmer months.
In another unusual move for a city where knockdown-and-rebuilds are common, the original cottage was stripped back to its timber frame and jarrah floors, and then entirely rebuilt using many of its original materials. ‘We hold the view that if you pull down houses like this, you lose the suburbs that you moved into,’ Pendal explains. ‘Lots of people wouldn’t go to the extent that Jurek and Michele did, to pull down
the cottage and reinstate it.’ Another key consideration was to avoid saddling Jurek and Michele with an ongoing financial burden. The project delivers naturally enhanced thermal performance to reduce utility outgoings in future.
‘Perforated brickwork casts changing patterns of light, as the new additions to the house were conceived as a series of chambers that address the morning sun’
It’s obvious that history and culture are revered throughout the design: the bricks for the new extension were recycled, the dining room floor was repurposed from a nearby building, and the troughs in the bathroom drove the spatial arrangement of that space. In the kitchen, a treasured display cabinet from a long-closed shop was placed carefully beside the new joinery, where it showcases a collection of toys and artistic props.
These poetic and practical qualities combine to produce a house that is entirely unexpected in the suburbs, but which Pendal asserts is not experimental: ‘It’s made out of the same things as regular houses, but spatially it’s a little bit different.’ For Jurek and Michele, the renovation has transformed their enjoyment of their home, creating a ‘really liveable’ space from a house that ‘wasn’t comfortable before’. ‘We wanted
a place that was really quite special,’ Jurek explains, ‘architecture; not just an extension that followed whatever the trend is.’
