Greenwich

When briefed to design a new home in Greenwich, the architects, Alex Popov and Associates were inspired by the site’s views of Sydney Harbour to create a house that maximised this amazing outlook.
“It is pretty spectacular when you visit the site,” says architect Brian Bass. “The site really inspired us when we were designing the home.”

With a brief to build a home that would be as low maintenance as possible, the architects selected bricks for the exterior facade of the home.
“Bricks were the obvious choice here,” says Bass. “As well as being about as low maintenance as it gets, they also provide effective thermal mass which was important to the client: making the building as green and as energy efficient as possible.”

Due to the site’s location in a harbourside suburb, full of either brick or rendered homes built in the 1950’s and 1960s, the architects knew from the beginning that they wanted to use traditional materials appropriate for the home’s context but with a modern twist.

Bass opted for a Roman Split brick in a smoke colour, favouring the shallower profile that the product has.
“In this instance, it has given the brick walls quite a different look – it almost looks like a tiled effect rather than what you’d expect from a traditional exposed brick wall.

“I like that, but it is different to the materials that we usually use, as we’d generally opt to render a brick surface. But I think this project proves how effective exposed brickwork can be, and now that we’ve used it, we’d definitely do so again.”