How the evolving family home has caused the rise of 'backyard buildings'

Rather than selling, moving and pouring all the involved expenses into sand, more people are opting to develop extra amenity in their own backyard for long-staying children, incoming elders, or for a home office or studio.

The result is that some novel small buildings are manifesting at the bottom of suburban gardens.

Design that shares the gain

On the laneway-facing rear of a relatively long block behind an Edwardian semi-detached in North Carlton, a young client has constructed a separate building that gives them so many present and future options it’s an idea others may find worth copying.

Jamie Sormann and Jo Foong of Foomann Architects, helped a client find a viable existing house and land package that could only be afforded on the basis that a new accommodation structure was raised leaving the old house to be rented by friendly tenants.

The neat two-storey build with upstairs bedroom and bathroom, and downstairs flexible open space, was a budget project, Sormann explains. “And that’s reflected in the materials.”

The diagonally-sliced, white brick wall “is painted second-hand bricks – a very economical way to construct a boundary wall. And you can’t get more economical than corrugated Colorbond for walling. The joinery is painted panels made more beautiful with small details.”

It’s all made to be incredibly dextrous because the upstairs bedroom, which currently is a single room for the client, has two doors and windows and can be easily divided into two bedrooms with a wall insertion. A single bathroom is all that is necessary and the landing is shared with robes and storage for both rooms.

The neat two-storey build was a budget project, Sormann says.
Photo: Willem-dirk Du Toit

Upstairs has a separate stairwell entry and the band of opaque polycarbonate crossing the upper frontage preserves privacy for near neighbours and the occupants.

Downstairs, which is fitted with a garage roller door – albeit a well-insulted one, the living room spans most of the 7.5 metre x 7.5 metre footprint and is the main socialising space for the communal arrangement of the lifestyle shared by the occupants of the two buildings.

“What makes this story unique is that while most people in their mid-30s have had enough of shared housing, these guys love it and continue to want to be part of a community.

“Sharing with friends is what makes the house affordable and is another model of home ownership.”

Small building, super functionality

Over in the back garden of a Queen Anne villa in Camberwell is a new room with so many potential functions and such an individual look that architect Ande Bunbury has entered it as a small project into this year’s Victorian AIA awards.

Constructed of site-poured concrete, it has hardwood-framed windows that slide and fold aside to open the corner of what she is happy to name “a concrete bunker” – a multi-layered deck, bluestone-paved and grassed landscaping (that along with an elevated plunge pool and the pergola she also designed). The choice of the main material was pre-determined by a 1930s neighbourhood character covenant that still holds sway.

Queen Anne villa in Camberwell, by architect Ande Bunbury. Photo: Drew Echberg

“When the houses in the area were being developed there was a covenant on the titles that said all the walls had to be brick, stone or concrete,” Bunbury says. “With the client liking the idea of concrete that became the driver for the materials we used.”

Physically detached from the house but notionally linked by the sheltering overhead pergola “with a patterning of battens to give it texture”, the 6 metre x 6 metre structure with a slightly projecting node, which has a long shelf that can be used as a desk, is “potentially an extra bedroom for a teenager”. A futon bed/sofa is already in situ.

The “half living, half bedroom” building has a small bathroom with a pebble floor, a wall-high graphic of a waterfall, and storage “that allows it to be used as a pool room”.

And it’s via the step-over wooden threshold of the combination bench seat/entry stair that the useful little structure can be entered. All the different levels of the underfoot interior and exterior surfaces make it all the more intriguing “but was also a way of resolving a sloping backyard without using a lot of retaining walls”.

“It’s a small building. But there’s a lot to it,” Bunbury says.