Middle Park Studio / Jean-Paul Rollo Architects

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Text description provided by the architects. Perched atop an existing garage in one of Middle Park’s narrower laneways is the site for this small studio for an artist. Rested on four steel posts, fixed to the existing concrete slab in each corner of the garage, floats the steel structure of the new construction.

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Constrained by 5 metre wide slithers of attached single fronted dwellings, this project manipulates the barn-shaped planning envelope by dividing the box horizontally and thoughtfully shifting its leftover parts to comply with the strict inner-city planning scheme and preserve the private open space of the neighbouring dwellings.

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Externally the first-floor studio is a box split into two and off-set horizontally in two directions. Internally the ‘split’ creates a shelf, a window sill, a recess for joinery and a nook for a desk. The result is a robust rectilinear form which, passing by confuses the usual scale of habitable internal space while inside not an inch of the tiny footprint is wasted providing adequate open work and desk space as well as incorporating extensive plywood bookshelving, file drawers, customised paper-stock drawers and an extremely compact bathroom.

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Ornamentation is stripped and the material palette draws upon its bluestone laneway context: metal deck and fibreglass wall cladding. Inside against the white walls is only timber and the glass partitions of the bathroom.

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