Burrawang Cottage

Burrawang Cottage called for increasing the living area of the house and connecting the house to the garden, but most importantly, creating a new centre (heart) to pull the family together.

The design explores the masculine/feminine, solid/void, light/dark elements of cottage architecture as it reimagines the traditional cottage and transforms the existing house into a family home. This project creates contrast in colour, scale and transparency to tell the story of change, while the interior palette unifies the space.

The existing cottage is expressed as the feminine – soft, white, dreamy and delicate, whereas the new interventions challenge this by injecting strong, dark, robust and confident elements to the house, creating balance and neutralising the feminine. The existing cottage is characterised by a traditional solid/void relationship with the external walls, whilst the new addition contrasts this with bi-folding doors which open the house up to the garden, blurring the line between inside and outside spaces.

The kitchen was recentred to the middle of the living area. It acts as a command centre with sight lines extending from the front of the house to the rear. The new “great room” adds scale and volume to the interior, with the fireplace and oversized pendant light responding to the scale of this new room. The black kitchen contrasts with the white cottage, and black elements extend through the interior of the existing cottage and the exterior of the new addition to weave the house together.