Indoor Atrium

Having an indoor Atrium is a wet dream for every modernist. This beautiful new house by Chenchow Little Architects is truly magnificent. The Skylight House inverts a traditional Victorian terrace house into a light-flooded modernist house with indoor atrium. The living rooms are relocated to the top floor where there is better access to views and sunlight, and the secondary bedrooms are placed on the ground floor. The design is imagined as two fluid horizontal planes that have been inserted within the traditional envelope; one folding to form a ground plane that mediates the natural ground levels along the site; and a second along the ceiling line which fragments and undulates to permit sunlight into the length of the building. The ground plane has been cut around a central courtyard containing an endemic Banksia Integrifolia which, along with the sculptural southern facing skylight, brings light into the living, kitchen and dining spaces. These two planes act as spatial dividers as well as create a light filled, open fluid space unfamiliar in a traditional terrace house. The pictured minimalist floor-to-ceiling lamp is the Parentesi Lamp by Flos and the white pendant lamp is the Artemide Castore lamp. The chair in the living room is Harry Bertoia's Diamond chaise for Knoll.

Architect: Chenchow Little Architects

Image Credits: John Gollings