Neeson Murcutt | Zac's House | Melbourne , Australia

"The house is set hard up to the rear and side boundaries of its site and behind a pre-existing tennis court that occupies the entire front two-thirds of the allotment. The shared nature of this court across three sites sets up an interesting prototype for distributing suburban amenity, and its presence reduces the available site area for the house and garden from 1200sqm to approximately 450sqm (160sqm of which is required for the subsurface dispersal field from the septic tank). It also provides a useful visual buffer from the street and allows the new dwelling to ‘borrow’ the open space created above its surface. Such a give-and-take relationship within and between sites is critical to the siting strategy in Sorrento. It also is the key to considering the broader application of this strategy in more normal suburban locations, as suggested by Neeson Murcutt through its suburban density diagrams showing the hypothetical application of this plan type in a broader context."


More at ADR and Neeson Murcutt Architects