And it’s becoming increasingly the case that working from home means not just providing a spare room that can be used as a study, but enabling the house to accommodate a fully-fledged business. This often requires the house having some form of public interface where visitors can come for meetings – not ideal when you’ve not had time to do a whip-around clean up beforehand.
House L2 was a typical Adelaide bungalow: large (but dark) rooms separated by a central hallway that was terminated by a land-locked bathroom and an under utilised fibro lean-to. The lean-to was removed, the bathroom demolished and the hallway opened to a new extension box that grows in height as it moves away from the original house and towards the backyard. Light is introduced from above through two skylights cutting across the width of the extension, where the rafters are expressed to define the public areas of the house. The dining area is positioned adjacent the new entry and doubles as a meeting table while new wet areas on the other side of the entry allow visitors to use the facilities without entering the rest of the house. Connected by a large opening with an over-sized sliding door, this public space can open to the living area and kitchen for the majority of the day, but be closed off for business when necessary.
