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20 June 2026

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

Inside Adam Haddow's 67sqm house, 3 minute commute to work and tour of the SJB studio.

Inside Adam Haddow’s 67 Square Metre Sydney House and the SJB Studio

Home to Office · June 2026

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.

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19 Waterloo Street on its corner in Surry Hills, a former corner shop that had been on the market for years. Photography: Anson Smart.

“Australia has some of the biggest houses in the world. The average house is about 240 square metres. This house is 67.”Adam Haddow
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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, with the Nicholas Harding painting set into its heart.

The footprint is 30 square metres and only 3.4 metres deep. Once the walls went in, 27 remained. Haddow's answer was to put the stair in the middle and let the rooms pinwheel off it. The generous rooms sit on one side, the compact service spaces on the other, their ceilings dropped to 2.1 metres so the living spaces can rise to 3.6.

The bricks are handmade Krause bricks, rejects from a Sydney performing arts centre, used outside for the walls and inside for the floors. The horizontal joints are raked and the verticals flush, a Frank Lloyd Wright detail that draws the little house long and low. The gate is cast bronze by the artist Mika Utzon-Popov, and strangers stop to run their hands over it.

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The Krause brick facade on Waterloo Street and the cast bronze gate by Mika Utzon-Popov. Every window is a different size, each one sized to the room behind it and the view it borrows. Photography: Anson Smart.

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The living room at the top of the house, and the built-in couch in gold corduroy beneath a Wynne Prize-winning painting of the creek that once ran through the site. Photography: Anson Smart.

Inside, the house turns around that single spiralling stair. There is 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.

The kitchen is small and it's Mike's. Its joinery is mirrored so the room reads twice its size, and Haddow designed the taps, a bird perched on the edge of a bird bath.

“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.”Adam Haddow
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The kitchen under its arched window; the mirrored joinery; and the stair down towards it. Photography: Anson Smart.

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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. The robe is lined in mirror. Ensuite photography: Anson Smart.

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The bedroom's east-facing half-moon window, and the landing with its round mirror. Photography: Anson Smart.

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The study nook under its skylight; the timber battened front door; and the rooftop, where the grass tree grows. Photography: Anson Smart.

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The plans, floor by floor, from the roof garden down to the street. Drawing: SJB.

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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The Reader's Digest building, designed by John James, now being reworked by SJB and Design 5.

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The aerial, and the internal roof garden render.

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The central atrium, and the original Reader's Digest signage. Supplementary photography: Evolving Picture.

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The SJB studio, two minutes from the house. A dark, compressed stair opens into the room, the same release as the house.

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, and the stair down into the studio.

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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.”Adam Haddow
Home19 Waterloo Street, Surry Hills, Sydney
Size67 sqm internal, 30 sqm site
ArchitectAdam Haddow, SJB
PhotographyAnson Smart, Evolving Picture
FilmBespoke Careers, Home to Office
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