The Village House

In January of 2013 we began working on a scheme that looks to urban design as a model for generating plan. The idea came about as a result of walking through the New Rouse Hill Town Centre with an architect friend and colleague, Professor Bruce Judd.

This location in Sydney's northwest is considered by many to be Australia’s best example of new urban design thinking. Our conceptual project attempts to explore ideas used in the Rouse Hill master plan by scaling them down to a residential context.

In dealing with two completely different classes of building, we aren’t majoring on the differences, but on how a suburban precinct could function as a stimulus for a house plan. A village of sorts.

Architect Leon Battista Alberti in the 14th century introduced the idea of representation in architecture, ‘The small city is like a large house and a large house is like a small city’…meaning how small parts relate to the combination of parts as a whole.

And so this plan exists as a village of spaces feeding off a central laneway. The hope is that it makes the spaces richer providing an opportunity for both character through aesthetics and form, and experience in use and circulation.

Enjoy!