Con and Antonia, our clients on this wonderful little job struggled through a convoluted council process to come out the other end with a great family development.
Lamia is the place in Greece where Con's parents came from and Antonia said when the scaffold was taken off the site and she first saw it complete, it put a smile on her face. Ari, Con's brother built the building and we loved working on this project because there was a great deal of family love and respect for the design process in all aspects of the design.
"and so, within a production limited by the fact of economic scarcity, architectural creation has an everyday character"
Adjacent to this central site in Marrickville, there was created a piazza that has been given the nick-name "Greek Parliament" by locals. Many old retired men, migrants from Greece at their youth in the 50's and 60's, now stand around or sit on benches to articulate their views, wise or not, about the world; a humble place of reflections; a loud place; a civic place ensues.
At the ground level, all the building is open to the piazza and the street; and this activation of the street is also welcome in this place where in the past there was no activity or engagement. In the residential levels, raw concrete structure is expressed as a beam and a balcony enclosure at once; this way privacy is achieved. Further layers of privacy are graded in the use of timber screens that are intense at the corner where they are needed.
