Mornington Peninsula, Victoria.
All stages in collaboration with Michael Lumby Architecture
Construction: ATMA Builders
Concept Design: Michael Lumby Architecture
Landscape: Franchesca Watson & Robyn Barlow
Photography: Tom Ross
2023 HOUSES Awards:
Winner - Australian House of the Year
Joint Winner - New House over 200m2
2023 AIA National Architecture Awards:
Award: Residential: Houses (New)
2023 AIA VIC State Architecture Awards:
Award: Residential: Houses (New)
Published in HOUSES April 2023
Mt Coot-Tha House was completed for a family member of one of the architects on an empty bushland block next to their shared childhood home. The project explores ideas of connection and refuge within a site characterised by its slope and extreme bushfire exposure.
Construction: Struss Constructions
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins with Jonathan Kopinski
Photography: Tom Ross
2021 The Design Files x Laminex Awards: National Residential Category Winner
2021 AIA QLD State Architecture Awards:
Award: Residential: New House
2021 HOUSES Awards:
New House over 200m2 National - Commendation
Published in HOUSES April 2021 , Dezeen , Divisaire , Leibal Interiors , The Design Files , The Local Project , est.living .
Kangaroo Point House explores ideas of refuge and exposure in a tight inner-city context. The ground floor plan of this project considers the site as a cohesive whole, seeding the architecture into the furthest extents of the site, and bringing the garden inside the building as a two storey void allowing ventilation and dappled light deep into the plan.
Construction: Mylne Build
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins with Tom Collins
Photography: Shantanu Starick
2024 AIA Greater Brisbane Regional Architecture Awards: HOUSE OF THE YEAR
2024 AIA State Awards: Commendation
East Brisbane House is the renovation and slight addition to one of the original workers cottages in East Brisbane. This original plan is still entirely intact above the line of the picture rail, but new work uses intricately detailed cabinetry and sliding openings to push and pull their scale to suit more flexible functions. This layering and operability gives occupants control of a gradient of light quality and ventilation even deep within the plan.
There was a conscious decision to leave the house in its original position just above street level to maintain the character of the street edge. This enables a clear difference in the experience of being upstairs within the old house and being within the new grounded space downstairs. The nostalgic qualities of being under a Queenslander are present here and there is a real sense of the landscape slipping in, under and through the new work.
Built by the architect.
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins
Photography: Shantanu Starick
2021 AIA QLD State Architecture Awards:
Commendation: Residential: Alterations & Additions
2023 HOUSES Awards:
House Alteration & Addition under 200m2 National Shortlist
Published in Green Magazine November 2023
The renovation and reconfiguration of 1984 AV Jennings Display home on the Gold Coast.
From the National Awards Jury:
“If there’s a simple project that deserves to be applauded, it’s this renovation and reconfiguration by Nielsen Jenkins of an unremarkable 1984 AV Jennings project home in the backblocks of the Gold Coast. Among the aging Commodores and struggling palm trees, this budget intervention creates elevated spaces within the existing footprint and opens the house toward a new covered courtyard that finally gives this home the connection to climate it deserves. This is everyday, accessible architecture that paves the way for our aging suburban housing stock to evolve sustainably.”
Construction: A&J Building
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins
Photography: Tom Ross
Film: Nikolas Strugar / Ravens at Odds
2022 AIA National Architecture Awards:
Commendation: Residential: Alterations & Additions
2022 AIA QLD State Architecture Awards:
Award: Residential: Alterations & Additions
K & T’s Place is the renovation of a traditional ‘Queenslander’ style home in a rapidly developing suburb of Brisbane. The house and garden occupy one of the last standing residential blocks in this area and the arrangement of the design works to defend the everyday workings of the family from new 16 storey neighbours to the west and predicted unit development to the south. The original requirements of the brief were for a deck and two new bedrooms downstairs, but instead the extension component of the design forms a series of occupiable landings which sit under the canopy of a massive fig tree and allow flexible use and controlled connection between levels. One of the clients is an artist and has his studio in the undercroft space beneath the building which also serves as a small gallery space on occasion, and these landings allow these functions to spill both outwards into the garden and vertically in to the more domestic areas of the house.
Upstairs, very small interventions allow the once insular and dark plan to work as three 'streets' of varying levels of exposure and occupation, with connection front and back to light and greenery. The traditional centralised entry and corridor are retained but resolved at the back of the building in a masonry fireplace which forms an anchor for the structure and circulation alike. Working predominantly with the existing structure, levels and slab of the house, the scheme plays on ideas of public and private in the family's daily rituals and aims to celebrate small routines of preparation and retreat.
Construction: Struss Constructions
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins with Jonathan Kopinski
Photography: Shantanu Starick
2021: Dezeen’s Top 10 House Renovations. International.
2020 HOUSES Awards:
House Alteration & Addition over 200m2 National Shortlist
Published in HOUSES Oct 2019 , Divisaire , Dezeen, Images Interiors & Living (Ireland), The Design Files 2020, The Local Project 2020 , AD.Russia ; YellowTrace
A new build project in a character area. Privacy is resolved through an open understorey which connects from the street to the backyard, and lower rooms are defined through generous voids overhead that funnel light across the levels.
Construction: Struss Constructions
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins with Jonathan Kopinski
Photography: Tom Ross
Published in The Local Project .
Toowoomba, Queensland
The Toowoomba House sits on a large, gently sloping site under a remnant grove of enormous gum trees midway between Toowoomba and Crows Nest with views across the Lockyer National Park towards Brisbane.
The block was one of the last remaining greenfield sites within a relatively new housing estate which had taken over a subdivided dairy farm. One approaches the block from above and across a small gully, and so the house and stand of trees are very visible from a long way away. Rather then trying to make the house into some kind of architectural statement, the project was conceived of as a quiet, horizontal shadow beneath the verticality of the gums above.
The house itself is pulled apart into a series of single storey modules that create a pinwheel plan which edits neighbours from the view and creates a series of three courtyards of different orientations, scale and typology. At the centre of this plan is the key ‘room’ of the house – a protected courtyard with a sculptural fireplace at its heart and the canopy of the gums above as its ceiling. The modules are positioned in a way that defines flat areas within the natural slope of the site that are open to sunlight and the view, but protected from neighbours and the cold south easterly winds that come up the valley.
Materials are chosen and assembled in a way which minimizes painting and upkeep and will let the building gradually patina and settle into its landscape.
Construction: Mark WInter Constructions
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins with Jonathan Kopinski
Photography: Tom Ross
2022 AIA Regional Awards: (Darling Downs & West Moreton)
Award: House of the Year
Habitus House of the Year Awards: Shortlist
Published in Habitus.
Poinciana House is a renovation and addition project which celebrates existing and new circulation routes to create meaningful landscape connections both within the block and also into a much wider site.
Construction: PJL Projects
Photography: Tom Ross
2021 AIA QLD State Architecture Awards:
Commendation: Residential: Alterations & Additions
2021 AIA Regional Architecture Awards:
Commendation: Residential: Alterations & Additions
2021 HOUSES Awards:
House Alteration & Addition over 200m2 National Shortlist
Published in HOUSES February 2022
SNACKMAN is a wine & cocktail bar on a busy Brisbane street serving Chinese share plate cuisine under the canopy of a number of heritage-listed fig trees. The design creates a range of spatial experiences for patrons through volumetric differentiation and careful placement of program within the plan. Stripped, dark and minimal interiors contrast with the owner’s other restaurant Happy Boy next door, but the key gesture of the scheme was to straighten the lower portion of an existing curtain wall and replace it with an articulated façade of operable windows and doors which allows occupation and movement through; engagement with the street; and framed views out to the trees.
The trees are a constant presence within the space, particularly at night when their lights become the primary light source within the bar and their shadows dance along the organised rhythm of the new facade.
Photography: Shantanu Starick
Construction: Lindona Design & Construction
2019 Eat Drink Design Awards
Best Bar Design | Shortlisted
This project is the restoration and renovation of a 1971 Californian Modernist style house by Brisbane architect Gavin Litfin. Both the clients and architects were keen to treat this project as a kind of heritage exercise, where small, subtle interventions re-orient the planning and improve landscape connections within the site and the greater landscape.
Photography: Shantanu Starick
Builder: Stewart Harris Constructions
2020 AIA QLD State Architecture Awards:
Commendation: Heritage Category
2020 AIA Regional Architecture Awards:
Commendation: Heritage Category
Published in: Green Magazine & The Courier Mail
The Wooloowin House sits on a very steep, west facing site with distant views towards the Samford Valley.
The inherent tension between the distant mountain view and the ferocity of the summer sun from this direction led to a strategy of enabling a much more dynamic occupation of the site than is typical in these buildings.
Two new 'public' rooms have been created; one internal room has been carved away through careful subtraction within the existing building envelope; and the other external room has been defined by the addition of a new framing arbour to the west, and a slender two-storey screening element to the south which shields the existing pool from the neighbouring block of units.
The project stitches together small additions with the existing structure, slab, pool and roof. This new arrangement has enabled a new series of grounded spaces that allow the family to occupy different parts of the site at different times of the day – retreating back into the undercroft spaces when the sun is at its harshest, and then moving outwards to the view as the sun turns to night.
Landscape: Nielsen Jenkins with Jonathan Kopinski
Photography: Shantanu Starick
Builder: PJL Projects
2020 AIA Regional Architecture Awards:
Commendation: Residential: Alterations & Additions Category
2020 AIA State Architecture Awards:
Award: Residential: Alterations & Additions Category
2020 HOUSES Awards:
House Alteration & Addition over 200m2 National Shortlist
Published in Green Magazine , HOUSES Magazine , Divisaire , The Local Project
The renovation of a 90s apartment in Noosa to allow the extended family a greater connection to the external spaces and space to gather and enjoy the daily rituals of a beach holiday.
Photography: Shantanu Starick
Published in HOUSES Magazine
The addition of a new outdoor room & deck to an existing heritage-listed Queenslander. The project was designed and built by the architects.
Photography: Alicia Taylor Photography
2015 HOUSES Awards
National Commendation: House Alteration & Addition Under 200m2
National Commendation: House in a Heritage Context
Published in HOUSES April 2015
The design and construction of a engineering office fitout for ad.structure in an industrial development in North Lakes.
Photography: Camera Obscura
2016 Australian Interior Design Awards:
National Award: Workplace Design
National Award: Sustainability Advancement
2016 AIA Regional Architecture Award:
Commendation: Small Projects Category
Published in GREEN Magazine & Artichoke Magazine
A three stage renovation and addition to an existing Queenslander which reconfigures the entry to allow greater separation of public and private zones but better connection to the yard.
Photography: Alicia Taylor Photography
Construction: Q Reno
2016 AIA Regional Architecture Awards: Commendation Alterations & Additions Category
2016 HOUSES Awards: National Shortlist: House Alteration & Addition Under 200m2
Published in HOUSES July 2016
The Webber House is an addition to the rear of an 1880s cottage that is an exercise in getting passive light and ventilation in to the lower floor plan and connecting the two levels of the house to each other, the back yard and the wilderness of the creek beyond.
Photography: Jared Fowler
Published in GREEN Magazine
The Tamborine House is a new build project at the top of Mt Tamborine behind the Gold Coast. The house is imagined in two parts – the low private wing which houses bedrooms and service areas, and the internalised deck/greenhouse of the public wing of the house which connects to the lawn and the rainforest beyond.
The house was designed and built by Lachlan with his parents.
Photography: Alicia Taylor Photography
Published in Australian Design Review & Habitus Magazine
The ongoing renovation of an 1880s workers cottage to connect the street level with a subterranean understorey through the use voids and cranks in the structural grid that allow opportunities for new openings.
Built by the architect.
Photography: Shantanu Starick
The End of the Line Festival is an ongoing community activation project in the Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba involving collaborations with local and government stakeholders, craftsmen, musicians and artists. Morgan is co-founder and Creative Director and the festival is in part an extension of his undergraduate thesis "Free Space: Subcultural Play & the Politics of Urban Public Space."
Photography: Camera Obscura and Chris Proud Photography
Small interventions to a Queenslander in Bardon that allow connection between the upper living levels and the yard below. The stair becomes tower, ledge and grandstand and the pool and arbour serve to privatise and retain the yard, and formalise a courtyard around the old mango tree at its centre.
Construction: Struss Constructions
Photography: Andy Macpherson
Brisbane, Qld.
The renovation and extension of a Donald Spencer House designed in 1966.
Construction: Stewart Harris Constructions
