Renovation: Renewed federation marks a brilliant start

The first commissions of newly fledged architectural practices can be risky because invariably they will go one of two ways:

They will  either be totally over the top, too ideas-rich concoctions of every frustrated inspiration of graduates who have served long internships in other design firms. Or they can be masterworks that benchmark a potential stellar future practice portfolio.

On the evidence of the first renovation done by Taylor Knights, the Fitzroy–based collaboration of James Taylor and Peter Knights,  it’s a a wonderfully promising launch.

Look at the pleasing proportions of the restoration and two-level rear addition made to a Ripponlea-brick federation, amended so two generations can share it.  

It has three bedrooms, two studies – including one under the old attic in the gable – and multiple living areas, including the shared kitchen-living room that opens to the rear garden. The room is naturally lit by an ingeniously placed skylight 5.6 metres “above the space shared by a family that loves to cook”.

Using lots of hand sketches, cardboard models and painstaking preparatory tweaking to “keep the form really simple, we worked and reworked the elevations until we had worked up a house of really simple planes”, says Taylor. “That it is so highly refined shows how much work we put into the first [plan development] stage”.

Check out the restrained sophistication of the colour and material palette. Peter Knights is also qualified as an interior designer and, says James Taylor, “we stripped it right back to black, white and grey because it’s one of our tastes and it’s got a timelessness to it”.

They have used unexpected materials, such as white-painted peg board –  “a product you hang tools from in the shed” –  on the stairwell wall and hallway sliding door. But what emerges as the visual feature is the dark kitchen joinery –  “big timber sections that we wanted to showcase”. 

The colour and material contrast really shows up that beautiful feel for proportionality and “the beautiful workmanship” of builder Neil Shepherd. “He worked really hard even to get the joins in the pegboard perfect”, says Taylor, who himself has a carpentry background. “I was two years on the tools”.

Even the least overt aspect of the project, the restoration of the formerly bastardised frontage and the inclusion of a very contemporary square window (now a window seat in the front study), talks of the confidence inherent in a first design outing.

“It’s highly refined and, we hope, highly sophisticated.”

taylorknights.com.au