Inside an Architect’s Small Sydney Home (Home and Studio Tour)

Australia builds some of the biggest houses in the world, an average of around 240 square metres. Adam Haddow built himself 67.

A partner at SJB and the immediate past president of the Australian Institute of Architects, Haddow found the site on a weekend walk through Surry Hills with his husband, Mike. It had been for sale forever. “There’s no way we’re buying that house,” he thought. “That is a shithole.” Then he went home, did some drawings, and changed his mind. The house sits on 30 square metres of land, barely bigger than a car space. Four months to approve, eighteen to build, 67 square metres inside, about the size of a small two-bedroom apartment.

“Australia has some of the biggest houses in the world. The average house is about 240 square metres. This house is 67.

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The corner shop as they found it; the model in green and timber, with the rooftop grass tree; and the section through the house, drawn and rendered, with the Nicholas Harding painting set into its heart.

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Inside, the house turns around a single spiralling stair. The generous rooms sit on one side, the compact service spaces on the other, their ceilings dropped to 2.1 metres. There is a built-in couch in gold corduroy beneath a Wynne Prize-winning painting of the creek that once ran through the site, a leather-wrapped handrail, a lipstick-pink robe, a shower open to the sky, and a rooftop where the grass tree flowers on the smoke from the barbecue.

“It’s almost like the honey pot of a house. A pot where people come and sit, and you can spend hours here in the sun.

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The kitchen is small and it’s Mike’s. Haddow designed the taps, a bird perched on the edge of a bird bath.

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The ensuite opens to the sky through a circular skylight and is wrapped in deep red tile, down to the marble basin.

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The bedroom’s east-facing half-moon window; the robe, lined in mirror; and the study, lined with books and art.

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Haddow’s walk to work takes three minutes. It passes the Reader’s Digest building, once home to a printing press and a computer, which SJB is converting into office space and a cafe as interior architects. The executive floors hold an internal roof garden Haddow rates as one of the most beautiful places he has been, and a large central void is imagined as a town hall for Surry Hills, which has never had one.

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Renders and the current building: the aerial, the internal roof garden, the central atrium, and the original Reader’s Digest signage. Supplementary photography: Evolving Picture.

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SJB works across architecture, interiors, urban design and planning, with studios in Sydney and Melbourne. It was founded in Melbourne in 1976 by Alan Synman, Charles Justin and Michael Bialek, whose surnames give the practice its name. When Haddow arrived from Melbourne in 2000 the Sydney studio was two people. There are now about 120, and he has been there more than twenty-five years.

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Models made in-house, the stair down into the studio, the founders, and the studio floor.

“Everyone’s invited, everyone’s welcome, and people’s voices are heard. That’s why I’ve never left.