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Northcote House
Northcote House
Melbourne, Australia
Jury Winner, 2026 A+Awards, Residential - Private House (XS <1000 sq ft)
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Northcote House
Melbourne, Australia
Jury Winner, 2026 A+Awards, Residential - Private House (XS <1000 sq ft)
Firm
Type
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2025
SIZE
0 sqft - 1000 sqft
BUDGET
Undisclosed
Northcote House, situated in an inner-suburban laneway in Melbourne, aims to reconceptualise the Victorian terrace typology using advanced contemporary fabrication technology. The outcome is a compact urban infill dwelling featuring an elevated roof garden, which reduces the urban heat island effect and supports local ecology.
Below the free-form timber roof is a hall-like room with a kitchen, dining room, and entrance veranda reminiscent of the neighbourhood's large factory lofts and Victorian church halls. The highly textured concrete internal wall provides thermal mass and improves the dining room's acoustics by reducing the flutter echo effect caused by the parallel boundary walls. We used point cloud scanning of as-built information to inform the manufacturing data of the concrete formliners as design feedback. Formliners are fabricated using industrial robots and CNC machinery. Ornamentation is a deliberate outcome of the construction process, as it is either part of the geometry conditioned by advanced technology or inscribed in the tooling process; for example, the pleated concrete texture is created with a V-shape CNC router cutter.
Thirteen rooflights bring natural daylight deep into the house, eliminating the typical dark corridor of a terrace typology. The brown roof creates spaces to support the local ecology. The facade addresses the street by serving as green infrastructure for climbing plants, and features a generous entrance balcony that provides natural surveillance of the laneway and the neighbouring public car park. The facade trellis consists of 385 manually-bent galvanised tubes, utilising a typical hydraulic pipe-bending machine assisted by augmented reality. These design efforts reduce on-site construction waste while contributing to design quality.
The 82-square-meter project demonstrated how the innovative use of space and construction techniques can unlock underutilised urban spaces to provide future housing solutions.
Below the free-form timber roof is a hall-like room with a kitchen, dining room, and entrance veranda reminiscent of the neighbourhood's large factory lofts and Victorian church halls. The highly textured concrete internal wall provides thermal mass and improves the dining room's acoustics by reducing the flutter echo effect caused by the parallel boundary walls. We used point cloud scanning of as-built information to inform the manufacturing data of the concrete formliners as design feedback. Formliners are fabricated using industrial robots and CNC machinery. Ornamentation is a deliberate outcome of the construction process, as it is either part of the geometry conditioned by advanced technology or inscribed in the tooling process; for example, the pleated concrete texture is created with a V-shape CNC router cutter.
Thirteen rooflights bring natural daylight deep into the house, eliminating the typical dark corridor of a terrace typology. The brown roof creates spaces to support the local ecology. The facade addresses the street by serving as green infrastructure for climbing plants, and features a generous entrance balcony that provides natural surveillance of the laneway and the neighbouring public car park. The facade trellis consists of 385 manually-bent galvanised tubes, utilising a typical hydraulic pipe-bending machine assisted by augmented reality. These design efforts reduce on-site construction waste while contributing to design quality.
The 82-square-meter project demonstrated how the innovative use of space and construction techniques can unlock underutilised urban spaces to provide future housing solutions.
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