How Benn and Penna Architects turned a dark terrace into a bright beauty

Skinny in Surry Hills is a Victorian terrace with just enough width for a window and door on the pavement threshold.

But with homes in this residential category being so close to the city, even unrenovated one-bedroom properties sell like hot croissants for $1.2 million. For a further $200,000, they’ll throw in an extra bedroom.

Benn and Penna Architects, who are well experienced in doing the skinny with a real sense of style, took a 3.9-metre wide by 19-metre long “dark” one-bedroom terrace to the very limits of its boundaries, and made every millimetre bright and usable.

Andrew Benn turned the roomy upper deck into a second, open-air living room, and made the courtyard on the ground level read and function as a run-on kitchen facility, with a genuine al-fresco quality.

A 3.8-metre-long bench was surfaced in a man-made material called Dekton, which was put over a substrate of marine ply to ensure endurance against any insults the weather could throw. “It’s a big, long table that really stretches the kitchen lengthwise,” Benn explains.

With the back-wall bench implying an element of high-end furniture that maintains the living room illusion, there is a bit of trickery to that bench and cupboarding. “We brainstormed the solution on site”, Benn says.

“When the doors need to be closed, a small lid and panel can be removed”. When restored “they give the arrangement a seamless look”.

Working on such a small scale necessitated a few tricks to make the space feel bigger.

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“Not overcrowding is one. Another is not to present the whole space all at once,” says Benn.

“Although the downstairs is one unified space, bumps (the cupboard and stairway) in the walls result in a controlled unravelling. The stairwell divides the space without divorcing the kitchen from the living room”.

“The stair doubles as a lightwell because there is an enormous skylight above that drops light into the darkest area of the house”.

An ostensible backdrop to the living room, but actually a vital component of the remodelling, is the courtyard’s back wall. The architects surfaced this in a fine, highly reflective white mosaic tile.

“It’s the only north-facing wall and, when the light hits it, there is a beautiful dappling effect that dances inside the house. It’s a very important part of the space because it is what the eye hits on first”.

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