The acts of magic that created a delightful home on a tiny 103 square metres

In architecture there’s no end to what prompts invention. But in residential, the mother of them all is the snug site. Try doing amendable lifestyle that the overseas visiting parents will feel comfortable sharing on 103 square metres in Carlton.

The word “tight” repeats in Wilson Tang’s descriptions of the Victorian duplex he began with.

Along with the interior darkness, constriction was the experience he sought to banish when creating a double-level addition to a block running along a party wall for 17 metres to a back lane.

He did the addition and refurbishment and put a dual-leafed kitchen door (timber battens before solid timber) right on the laneway where it becomes a feature in an attractive wall of thin Victorian-made artisan bricks that meld together the lane’s bluestone and red brick tonalities.

He did the whole project with similar sensitivity, originality and the quality-over-quantity approach that his Sonelo practice has made its trademark.

He did it by dissuading the client from three bedrooms, instead showing how prioritising a north-side courtyard that at 3.5 by two metres “is still very tight”, would effect a delightful home.

“The courtyard is the core idea,” Tang says. Yes. But the other intelligent inclusions and inventions that so noiselessly support functionality need to be pointed out.

For example: mirrors. “They were in the plan from the beginning because they extend space.”

They’re on the wall near the dining table to apparently double the width of the steel-tread stair. They’re in the splashback and on the wall behind the walk-around end of the kitchen bench that leads into the downstairs bathroom.

“Dark tinted mirrors because clear mirror can be too intimidating.”

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The dark tenor is anyway the house’s downstairs aesthetic for the way “it draws your eyes to the courtyard where the light is”.

The dining table is a terrific bit of kit. Tang designed it to run on a rail affixed on the mirror wall and on wheels so it can be moved to open space up for a client partly brought up in Bali, and who likes to sit on the floor when entertaining.

One of the upstairs rooms is the more formal second living room or erstwhile parental digs. Through a window coved in a deep steel surround that provides sun protection and neighbour privacy, the upper room gets north light and courtyard overview.

What makes the close-fit house so admirable is this attention to the fine detailing.

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