Stone House is the alteration to a single storey vernacular house in the rural landscape setting of northern NSW Australia. The original house was built with local materials and craftsmanship. Over the years various additions were made to the house exhibiting the different layers in its occupation.

The brief was to renovate the house within a limited budget whilst offering better living arrangements for a holiday house that would suit their growing family. Our proposal was to reinstate value with little intervention; with this in mind we had two design strategies. One was the idea of preservation; wherever possible elements of the building fabric would be salvaged but only to reveal its qualities in a meaningful way. And the other was the idea of addition. Given the budget limitations, the additions had to be singular and multifunctional. The response was a ‘breathable’ facade.

Stone House combines these two design ideas into a simple calming palette; within the house all walls and floors were kept to neutral tones to reveal the exposed timber rafters as the only feature of the interior. The shell of the house merges the existing stone work with the new ‘frame’ creating a new whole and importantly a clear relationship to the landscape beyond.