History Repeats

Words Jarrod Haberfield

When is a brand new house not really new at all? When its facade is an absurd yet picture-perfect rendition of what stood on the site before.

Melbourne architects Jackson Clements Burrows are not in the habit of making absurd propositions, but when the local council insisted the decrepit shack that stood on their client’s site was of “contributory significance to the streetscape” and had to be retained, absurdity became the order of the day. Rather than jam a two-storey box behind the original front wall of the house, like an ode to Fox Studios, the young design team approached the site’s restrictions with trademark affection. “We like the idea of working with the constraints you’re faced with,” explains director Tim Jackson, “because the constraints are often a reflection of people’s concerns.” The architects have explored the idea of ‘sampling’ in many past projects, always interested in how new work can respond to its surrounds while avoiding literal transcription. The result is an entirely new house, with a front façade that carries a desaturated 1:1 image of what once stood there. High performance photographic film sits behind standard glazing in a move that winks to the sepia-toned plaques adorning prominent historic street corners.

The building, though, is cannier than mere sublimity: the folded-back edge of the façade reflects the form and scale of the ‘hipped’ shack roofs surrounding it. But the real genius of the project is its engagement with the public. Conceptually, the façade raises a polemic rather than resolves it, while visually, it literally plays you like a stringless marionette within the street frontage as you seek to align the brick boundary wall and the monochrome tree with their real-life matches. Only from the spot it was taken does the perspective of the photo concur with the real world, and it is there you realise that the joke – if it is one – is on you.