Palmerston Street House

Originally constructed in 1866 as the ‘Rose of Carlton Hotel’, the project at Palmerston Street House had a keen interest in the very particular urban context of the building. The house stands comfortably amongst the other remnants of 50s and 60s alterations in the area undertaken by their European migrant occupants – a concrete terrace, a brick façade rendered over - work undertaken with a very ‘builderly’ aspect. These alterations, beyond all else, demonstrate the seemingly impenetrable quality of Victorian buildings; they can be significantly altered, but not yet lose their strength or imposition to the street both in terms of building type and building scale. Considering the resilience of these Victorian buildings along with the project’s financial requirements, it was decided the intervention would be deliberately interior only and direct in nature, seeking an essential quality to that which was required for the client’s brief. In this manner, it was hoped that the building would appear, at first glance, untouched from the street, and that only small glimpses of change, such as a first-floor terrace would be revealed at second or third passing, depending on the direction of the sun or a reflection on a window. Retaining the existing exterior form, the response shifted to try to achieve a spatial, rather than architectonic, resolution. Spaces were re-arranged internally - the stratified sense of the Victorian building was rethought to allow greater vertical connection, existing spaces were reinvestigated to consider their multifunction potential. A garage was not necessarily a garage, but a space to sit, eat and meet. A significant amount of work was required for the tight budget, requiring a direct and parsimonious approach to material selection, detail and complexity of construction, and hence also a curious alignment with the direct approach of the immigrant work. There was a necessary immediacy and austerity in responding to the building’s needs, where the selection and quality of materials evinced their meaning in construction. Concrete was chosen as it was durable and needed no other finish; frugal in terms of timing and money - a similarly ‘builderly’ approach as of the interventions of 60 years prior, yet seeking a poetic abstraction. New work was sought to be clearly evident, as layers of intervention, within the Victorian building as in the new concrete stair and bathroom. The existing ground level concrete floor was deliberately retained and rejuvenated using a mineral based sealer, so as to maintain a direct visual link to the existing garage, now repurposed. A series of worthy elements from the building’s past have been retained, such as a 1950s kitchen, restored and adapted for contemporary use. Elsewhere, sympathetic interventions and alterations have been removed to evince the more elegant and robust nature of the original Victorian building.