Height & Light
From Sanctuary issue 11. More articles like this
Sanctuary magazine issue 11 – Height & Light – Kensington, Melbourne green home profile
Words Fiona Negrin
Photography Sonia Mangiapane
Excerpt: If you thought that an extremely narrow plot of land with little direct sunlight would make an inauspicious site for a house, you would be right. Unless, that is, you’re a couple of architects in the market for “a weird block of land that nobody would know what to do with”. So it happened that Tim Hill and Dominique Ng of Tandem Design Studio bought a tight 160 square metre block wedged between a former factory and an industrial kitchen in Melbourne’s Kensington. “We couldn’t see any way to get into the real estate market apart from buying a cheap block of land and using our standard skill set to build a house ourselves,” says Tim. He and Dominique had already spent six years plotting their dream home when they found this site. “We’d read a lot about small houses. We were thinking about what a good house would be like. ‘Sustainable’ is a word that’s come into common use, but we simply thought of it in terms of function and good design, which to us meant natural light, effective ventilation and comfort.”
