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Tsai Design’s modus operandi has always focused on unlocking the untapped potential of compact places.
The design firm’s mantra is: ‘Where you see awkward and unconventional, we see opportunity and potential.’
This also happens to be a fair description of their recently completed cottage renovation in Richmond before its transformation.
‘The house was an amalgamation of three different builds over the years,’ Tsai Design director and architect Jack Chen says. ‘On the front, it had the Victorian single-storey brick cottage, there’s a middle extension that was added, and lastly, a metal shed extension to the back.’
Due to the incremental expansion, the resulting house ended up with the rooms all stacked one after another, connected by a very long and narrow corridor. It also meant the spaces inside lacked natural light and the owners — a family who’d lived there for 10 years — had outgrown the existing floorplan.
Jack recalls how they quickly sketched up a concept for the renovation on their very first site visit.
‘It was a drawing showing the tapering up of the ceiling in the open plan living space, welcoming in the northern sunlight and framing the view of a mature tree in the backyard,’ he adds.
This elevated roof line set the tone both for the resulting redesign, and the project’s name: Treeview Cottage.
The front two bedrooms and the main bathroom (which the clients renovated just a few years ago) were retained, allowing them to focus their attention on updated the living spaces and reworking the main bedroom to help ‘break up’ the dominant and dark corridor.
Expanding the bedroom onto the existing deck made room for a study nook, while a new sliding glass door and a skylight in the hallway created an improved sense of indoor-outdoor flow.
The room now almost appears to ‘merge into the corridor’, emphasised by the ceiling beams that stretch the length of the bedroom and continue across the hallway.
At the rear, the kitchen was moved to the dining and living room in order to maximise space. Custom shelving also reveals Tsai Design’s space-saving skills, with pink-steel and plywood shelves connected to a cosy daybed corner, which doubles as seating for the dining table.
‘We tried to work with the existing house rather than demolish and rebuild,’ Jack says. ‘We also preserved and restored the original timber flooring, sanding it back to reveal its natural beauty.’
The footprint of the house is more or less the same. But the simple addition of the raked ceiling, featuring lofty two-storey windows, has been like a breath of fresh air for the family’s much-loved inner city cottage.
