New Build Residence and rooming acComodation
Twins: Queenslander inspired Adaptable House and Rooming Accommodation
The Sunnybank Twins are a thoughtful take on the charming experiences of a Queenslander, intended to serve as housing and rooming accommodation for overseas students and visitors. This project take a visually familiar language but applies it inward with a sense of safety and permanence: internalising the verandah and the undercroft, providing generous volumes that relate to greenery, and celebrating the unique qualities of subtropical Queensland living.
Project Type New Build Residence and Rooming Accommodation
Location Sunnybank, QLD
Client Private Residential
Scope Current Project
The Beginning: Client Vision & Site Context
Redeveloping a post-war home on a generous double-lot
Located close to the train-line and on a busy side street with fast-moving traffic, the subject site featured an aged post-war cottage with generous yard space. Noise was ever-present and the streetscape very much work-in-progress, but interspersed between older housing were established trees and views of distant hills. Here the connectivity to transport and proximity to the eateries of Sunnybank was a big plus, but the design response needed to cater for the somewhat hostile surroundings.
Our Design Response
Contemporary take on the Queenslander as Home for the Overseas Visitors
With Sunnybank being a melting pot of many cultures, we wanted to give potential residents - likely visitors from overseas - a taste of what we love about subtropical Queensland living. This is a place to call home in a foreign land - somewhere to feel a sense of permanence and belonging.
We started with the traditional motifs of a Queenslander - the hip roofs, wide eaves, compact form, battening and weatherboard-and-tin materiality; added to the durability and near-industrial aesthetic of blockwork and concrete. We turned corridors into verandahs and made circulation spaces interesting and occupiable.
The Twins then take on their own identity. The Rooming Accommodation is more humble and pared back - grey blocks, plywood-look cabinetry, and expressed structure; each of the five microunits having its own feature colour and sense of identity. At the same time we wanted to create shared kitchen, living and dining spaces that we would be proud to call our own - not just compliance spaces, but generous, interesting and connected to greenery, thus encouraging residents to foster and enjoy building community.
The House, meanwhile, is a more premium take on the same core themes - think honed blockwork, oak-inspired flooring and interiors, and generally an uplift in the level of finish and ambience. The House is defined by generous verticality and volume - large openings that create a sense of connection to landscape and sky.
On the Ground level, the House has an integrated Adaptable Space - a small self-contained granny flat that, through the rearrangement of lockable sliding doors, can be used as a home office, a space to house grandparents, a teen’s retreat, or sub-rented out for some added household income. Further, the downstairs Study/Guest room can be configured to connect to either the Adaptable Space or the main residence - giving home owners more agency and flexibility in customising the space to their unique needs.
Throughout the project there’s a strong sense of contrast - whereby indoor/outdoor, solidity/craftsmanship, concrete/timber, the stereotomic and the tectonic. Simple elements are woven together in a new way, creating a tangible, memorable and uniquely Queensland-inspired place for the residents to call home.
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