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located in a Located in one of Sydney’s vibrant centres, Up Down House, designed by Brad Swartz Architects, is a small row of townhouses overlooking the picturesque Surry Hills streetscape, showcasing clever design solutions within a dense urban environment. value. The house is modest in size but generous in terms of space and design quality, providing an interesting approach to the constraints of a four meter wide terrace house.
The house embodies many of the practice’s ongoing interests in improving urban living, including a connection to nature, regardless of context, and the use of design tools to enhance a sense of space beyond the physical boundaries of the site. The company has refined this approach through its work and applied it to common housing types across the city.
A typical feature of Sydney townhouses is that the front door is set back only slightly from the street, disrupting the transition between public and private areas. Up Down House responded by optimizing space while preserving privacy and connectivity. The dining room is located on the street: it is the first room that guests enter and, therefore, it is the most public room in the house. To increase the visibility of the space, it was painted a vibrant and rich green, reminiscent of a local cafe.
The street-facing restaurant is painted dark green, reminiscent of a café.
Image: Catherine Lu
Crossing the next threshold, visitors enter one of two domed corridors, past a carefully curated central pod, before descending three steps to the home’s main living areas – the kitchen and sunken lounge. The central pod houses tall joinery, a refrigerator and a separate powder room. However, beyond its practicality, it plays a key role in shaping the perception of the space, separating the two social areas of the home while allowing glimpses into them.
The house has been reserved for a large commercial warehouse and is one of six houses in a row. This subdivision pattern creates two sources of light and air: the front facade and the rear facade. A typical architectural approach might be to insert a central lightwell or courtyard to bring daylight and ventilation into the plan. Up Down House’s strategy, however, was to have a roof dormer at the top of the building that stretched from one boundary to the other and sat at the top of the double-height void above the kitchen. It’s a clear, practical and effective design element that strives to do a lot for the home. Abundant light flows through the voids, creating a sense of connection between floors, while skyward openings enhance the feeling of closeness to nature by framing beautiful views of the tree canopy and casting dappled shadows onto the kitchen island.
Cutouts in the plan allow visual connections between floors. Artwork: Bonnie Porter Green. Planter: Jordan Fleming.
Image: Catherine Lu
Another traditional strategy on a narrow site like this might be to centralize the stairs in one location. This is often considered the most efficient use of space and provides a place to move up and down the home. Here, however, the staircase is divided into four different locations: three steps are located in the corridor at the threshold between the front room and the kitchen, and three further steps lead to the sunken lounge, connecting the ground and first floor Main staircase, and three more to the master bedroom. In this configuration, the stairs go beyond circulation and provide a sense of the site’s natural topography, allowing the occupants to feel grounded. The subtle transition of levels from the entrance to the rear garden means that the sunken lounge occupies the entire width of the site and is the highest space in the home. Therefore, the entertainment area becomes the most spacious space in the home.
The ambition to expand the sense of space continues outdoors. Reclaimed hardwood doors are stacked to one side so that the entire width of the lounge can be connected to the courtyard. An integrated concrete bench in the corner of the courtyard serves as a seat and ledge for potted plants, while also hiding the air conditioning condenser. One final move takes advantage of the presence of a rear lane: a large wooden gate in the back fence opens onto the lane, gaining valuable extra space when the house is in party mode.
Up Down House takes the common constraints of terraced housing and responds through a carefully designed mix of tried and tested solutions and innovative, site-specific initiatives. Brad Swartz Architects has always emphasized quality over quantity, prioritizing connection with nature, even on narrow city center sites.
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