TYPE
LOCATION
STATUS
CLIENT
SITE AREA
FLOOR AREA
PHOTOGRAPHY
TEAM
RECOGNITION
Residential Alteration & Addition
Bayswater, Western Australia
Completed 2023
Private / Owner-builder
450m²
90m² new addition — 90m2 renovation
Jack Lovel
Craig Nener
Landscaping: Michelle Kar (mkticks)
Dezeen 2024 Winner — Renovation of the Year
BLT 2024 House of the Year
— A quietly confident renovation of a 1900s cottage, Shadow House blends heritage, light, and landscape into a sustainable suburban retreat.
Shadow House is a thoughtful alteration and addition to a circa 1900 weatherboard cottage, blending heritage with contemporary sustainability. The original cottage was retained and restored, while a new extension—clad in charred recycled jarrah—was carefully designed to recede into the background, allowing the existing structure to remain prominent in the streetscape.
Oriented southwest to northeast, the new living spaces follow a raking roofline that captures early morning sunlight and frames the twin jacaranda trees that define the site. These trees become part of the architecture—viewed, framed, and animated by the changing light throughout the day. As the afternoon sun moves across the building, it energizes the living spaces with warmth and contrast, enhancing the texture of materials and the quality of light within.
A private guest studio occupies the southern corner of the site, clad in dark plywood and opening onto its own courtyard. Between this and the main home, an airy atrium and warm, raw jarrah-lined courtyard provide a moment of pause, connecting the inside with the outside and drawing the eye to sky and foliage.
The rear verandah is a deliberate nod to the Australian vernacular—a reference to regionalism and the lived experience of climate, shade, and informal outdoor life. This gesture anchors the home to place and memory, forming a key touchstone in GROTTO Studio’s design philosophy of contextual sensitivity and spatial grounding.
Through reclaimed materials, passive design, and finely tuned spatial relationships, Shadow House offers a model for compact, sustainable suburban living. It is a home shaped by light, landscape, and legacy—designed to live in, and to last.