cooks river house

Cooks River House is a a secluded, sustainable family home within a lush natural landscape in Sydney’s inner west. A single-storey bungalow with an unsympathetic later addition previously occupied this sloping site, facing south along the Cooks River. The overgrown site had a wild, natural feel which our clients saw as an adventure-filled place to raise their young family. The slightly wild feeling to the landscape was retained in the new plan - with rocky outcrops and abundant planting - but reworked to create two ways of entering the house. Firstly, a direct route via a staircase from the garage to the main entrance. The second, a more meandering approach through the garden, negotiated by a series of platforms that step down towards the house, whilst creating terraced outdoor spaces for play and entertaining.

Key intentions were to improve the connection to the natural beauty of the site – creating a house that feels far removed from the city, responding to views, topography and light. The later additions to the house were removed to reveal the original form, offering an opportunity to create a series of light-filled, open living spaces that better connected to the surrounding garden. The house overlooks the Cooks River and its surrounding parkland - a former industrial artery in recent decades revived as a place of recreation. The changing nature of this urban landscape is mirrored in the approach to this site – regenerating the garden with native plants, creating a low maintenance garden with minimal water needs, and paring back plant cover to reveal the natural rocky escarpments.