Cricket Pitch House / Scale Architecture

Architects: Scale Architecture
Location: North Bondi, Australia
Lead Architects: Matt Chan, Nathan Etherington
Area: 237.0 m2
Project Year: 2017
Photographs: Brett Boardman

Structural Engineers): SDA Structures
Hydraulic Engineers): Liquid Hydraulics
Planning Consultants): aSquare Planning

Text description provided by the architects. The Cricket Pitch House is a free standing dwelling in North Bondi, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

The client’s brief for a five bedroom house is centred on a garden suitable for backyard cricket for the growing family.

Located in a well-established suburban part of Sydney, the building’s form recalls the pitched roofs of its environs. The roof ridge runs diagonally across building, creating four different facades, each responding to their orientation.

The linear organisation of the house creates a long north-facing side yard that maximises solar access to the house, while also forming the ideal dimensions for a backyard cricket pitch.

Finely detailed board finished concrete provides texture and mass to the study and entry spaces, while large timber framed glass sliding doors open from the dining and living spaces to the garden.

The upper brick volume is punctured by horizontal windows, framed by painted steel surrounds that protect the glass from the intense summer sun.

A light-filled stair void makes a transverse cut through the plan, provides separation between programs and is expressed on the façade with a large steel vertical window.

Working closely with Landscape Architect, Sue Barnsley, the roof garden, backyard meadow and indigenous grove are reimagined to contain native flora purposefully selected to attract birds and insects endemic to the area.