, design director at Cox Sydney, has reconfigured a terrace home in Glebe referencing Moroccan Riad principles, creating a home for his family around a central garden. All interior space begin to blur with the courtyard which takes on a dual role – separating the parents’ retreat from the teenagers’ wing, while simultaneously creating an area for shared connection.
The house began its life in 1885 as an Italianate terrace in Glebe’s Toxteth Estate. During the interwar period, its structure underwent a significant and largely insensitive alteration into a boarding house. Agius respectfully acknowledged the long and colourful history embedded within the buildings existing fabric, carefully retaining all elements of the original 1885 structure.
In reconfiguring the building back into a single dwelling, the aim was to “create a courtyard house that afforded much better amenity than the typical terrace typology”. A process that saw the highly articulate negotiation of old and new, the relationship between the two becoming the key point of interest within the project.