North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
The Ridge Street project by Tzannes Architects sought to explore the potential for using traditional and familiar materials in expressive ways that would mediate between a residential and urban scale through a dynamic intervention that is both considerate to its context and distinctly contemporary.
The project has its genesis in an engaged and ambitious client, Metrics Credit Partners that is an emerging and growing Financial Services company. The client purchased an elegant and locally significant 2 and 3-story late 19th Century Heritage Terrace to be the headquarters for their executive management team.
The remarkable design was short-listed for a 2021 International Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The building’s location occupies the boundary between the growing Urban commercial hub of North Sydney and an adjacent low-rise neighbourhood of two-storey terraces and single-storey housing. The team was engaged for a two stage re-development process.
The first stage of development involved an interior fit-out of the larger three storey portion of the building. Careful and sensitive restoration of existing fabric was undertaken together with spatial replanning and insertion of new joinery elements to enable the functioning of the business.
An exhaustive research process extended to identifying the particular mouldings, skirtings, architraves, and cornices specific to the original building’s era for areas of restoration. New joinery insertions adopted a consistent, distinct and legible material palette of dark stained timber and bronze, carefully detailed to relate to the existing forms, spaces and details of the original building.
The second stage, which followed the client’s successful occupation of the building, sought to maximize the potential of the site and provide for expansion of the growing business. Existing unsympathetic additions had created spaces of limited use and functionality. The architects designed proposals that navigated a challenging and complex approval process to deliver a building of high functionality and contextual sensitivity.
Emerging from the greenery of North Sydney’s Ridge Street, the intricate ‘sawtooth’ bond pattern of the brickwork facade provides for a highly dynamic and continually evolving pattern of shadows. The challenges of achieving a non-standard and exploratory solution required a complex design, careful prototyping and a skilled and committed building team.
Designed as a simple but distinctly contemporary form, the language of the ‘articulated’ brickwork together with steel-framed glazing and aluminum louvers, complements the materiality of the original building.
The curved form, scale, and massing respect the adjoining heritage building whilst maintaining privacy for the neighboring terraces. The outcome simultaneously gives the impression that it has existed for a long time while providing a surprise in its contemporaneity.
Project: Ridge Street Commercial
Architects: Tzannes
Client: Metrics Credit Partners
Contractor: Grater Construction
Photographers: Brett Boardman