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Alterations and additions have long been the tedious stepping stone for young architects in order to establish themselves. However, a new generation of practitioners is finding delight in producing these small yet innovative pieces of architecture.

A Sydney Architect once said that it was good that most people had to use a kitchen to cook and a bathroom to wash, otherwise many young architects would starve. This reality is present in numerous fledging practices across Australia, which occupy the world of the ‘backyard addition’, ‘the second storey’ and the ‘kitchen reno’. The level of commitment and energy required to complete a good, small addition is equal to that of a house 10 times the budget. But many clients who would like to use an architect are alternately seduced into spending their fee on an extra bedroom or a better rangehood by well-meaning friends and a hyperactive media.

Most architects are only interested in the ‘reno’ as a means to an end, ie. if they do enough of them, someone will provide a whole house to design. When the architect produces enough houses, the jobs get bigger and more expensive and eventually become apartment towers. Then, of course, if someone is offered a reno, they give it to a young architect they know, probably someone who used to work for them. And so they cycle begins again. Some architects have chosen to resist this trend and take great delight in the constraints of budget, space and local authority toproduce exquisite small pieces of architecture. Melbourne practice Field Consultants won the 2002 Victoria Architecture Award for Half House, a highly composed project that embraces architectural possibility inherent in the backyard renovation.

The reno is often the testing ground for many ideas that are transformed into larger projects and remain jewels in their own right, most notably Peter Corrigan’s Charman house (1988) located n the Victoria capital’s suburb of Balwyn. Over the past four years, Melbourne practice s-architecture has fully embraced the addition and renovation opportunities presented to partners Graham crist and Stuart Harrison. Developing these projects as a suite of solutions to common problems, s-architecture describes them as ‘protoypes for urban problems’ or, in an allusion to Le Corbusier’s omniscient Five Points of Architecture, the ‘Five points of Backyard Renos’.

The collective projects are additions and renovations to the rear of reasonable houses in Melbourne’s inner-city suburbs for families and young professional who purchased them a couple of years ago and are now looking to upgrade. Thanks in part to the proliferation of lifestyle shows or ‘The block’ effect, the aspirations of the clients are always greater than their means and the budget is always tight, so making something out og nothing is the challenge.

Harrison explains that s-architecture does not have a problems with these constraints. “We are constantly trying to do as much as we can with what we’ve got and we’re always looking for things that others miss.”

Aesthetically, s-architecture’s work is modern and clean – not a slick ‘stainless-steel translucent-white-modern’ – but what Crist refers to as “a ’70s style of Modernism that in the past was loose enough that everyone could [afford to] own it.” The practice’s recently completed Tunnel House, located at the end of a cul-de-sac in Brighton, easily engaged with this aesthetic by drawing on its existing ’70s painted brick box structure. Forming an addition to the original pavilion on the leftover piece of land in a street dominated by Edwardian houses, the project aspires to be within the adjacent well-heeled zone of what is locally described as “Melbourne’s premier bayside suburb.”

The task for this reno was familiar; new kitchen, new bathroom, extra bedroom and extra living space for a growing family with an interest in design. The resulting project is the addition of an extruded form that nestles onto the northern length of the building’s flat roof. Unrelated to the ground floor in appearance, the new objevt houses a linear collection of spaces accessed from a central staircase. Essentially the reno is the product of a lengthy planning process and is formed by the neighbours constraints presented from objections by adjoining neighbour. As a results, the addition appears as a ‘pretend mansard roof’ to the white brick house below. The form is contemporary, but strangely familiar with a special zinc cladding, which alludes to a roofing material, in a conventional architectural palette of greys and white. The project takes the opportunity to play with the paradox of adding a ‘roof’ to a house in a street of houses with prominent roofs, hence making it comply with the apparent ‘neighbourhood character’ of the area. “We enjoy playing with the constraints of the planning process,” says Crist. “We can extract interesting things out of quite mad objections,” Harrison confirms.

From the street, the ‘roof’ presents an intriguing front facade. Uncomfortable on its white-brick base, the structure’s offset cranks in the pitch along with the angle of the walls are seemingly generated by an unseen force. When extruded along the length of the building, these factors define interesting folds in the surface of the form. The resulting complexity of these moves animates the addition through apparently easy gestures.

The ground-floor interior is clean and direct. Exposed beams from the ’70s have been retained as the ceiling and a flat arch is maintained as the entrance to a new kitchen, which is detailed in a straightforward manner but with a fun colour selection. Moving through the house, the existence of what lurks above remains entirely unexposed.

Ascending the staircase into the extrusion, the economy of the addition is apparent, the spaces are generous and the architects have carefully chosen how to spend the limited budget on maximum quality. The landscaping maintains a clear contemporary aesthetic without incident or surprise.

This house is optimistic. It seeks to extract an architecture, which is aspirational as well as sculptural, from means that are simple and conventional to construct. The enthusiasm and confidence of this small piece of architecture is delightful and, at the end of the process, the client is left with a building that belongs to a larger set of ideas.

The work of s-architecture embraces the suburbs, and resists viewing them as a threatening or unattainable place for architecture, but one of vast opportunity. Crist explains, “We see the [Australian] suburb as a diverse place, an eclectic space, a ‘your house now’ idea of the suburb, where rules don’t apply and you can do what you want to do on your own piece of plan. At this point in time, the suburban ideal is in conflict. We have the “not in my backyard” versus “you can’t tell me what to do’ and councils struggle with this everyday.”

Indeed, it is difficult to discuss any piece of inner-urban residential architecture in Melbourne or Sydney without talking extensively about the struggle with planning processes and local councils. Australia architectural luminaries Harry Seidler and Glenn Murcutt have both had famous battles with local authorities over approval for houses of their design. However, s-architecture resists the arrogant and demeaning opinions most architects have for local council planners. “Of course council planners are under-resourced, overworked and less educated in design than architects, but so are builders and that’s the point.” says Harrison. “We have to work with builders through processes of negotiation [in order] to produce a good piece of architecture. Why should it be any different with a planner? The process is frustrating for all architects – those who know what they are doing and those who don’t – but the imposition of strange planning constraints can usually force a more interesting result.”