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Union House in Brunswick, Melbourne, answers a difficult question: how can a narrow cottage block accommodate a family of five without losing its connection to the street? Austin Maynard Architects built an entirely new, vertically stacked house behind the restored brick facade of the original cottage. The result keeps the memory of the small house while placing bedrooms, living areas, a basement and outdoor space across several levels.
The project is not a conventional cottage renovation. The architects describe the rough brick entry facade as the only remaining part of the old house, with new cross-laminated timber (CLT) walls, floors and stairs forming the structure behind it.
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What Union House is—and what it preserves
Union House is a new family home in Brunswick, Melbourne, designed by Austin Maynard Architects for two adults and their three teenage sons. Its site is only 5.5 metres wide, so the design could not rely on a broad, single-storey footprint. Instead, the house rises through multiple levels and extends downward into a basement.
The street-facing brick cottage facade was retained, restored and incorporated into that new construction. In the architects’ wording, “Union is an entirely new house, which has retained, restored and incorporated the beloved original cottage facade, despite no heritage overlays or council requirement.” The decision was therefore an architectural and owner-led choice, not a response to a compulsory heritage listing.
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ArchDaily’s project profile identifies the rough brickwork at the entry as all that remains of the original house. It sits behind new CLT walls, making the old facade a visible threshold rather than pretending the entire building is historic. The approach preserves the scale and material memory seen from the street while allowing the interior to be planned around contemporary family life.
Architecture & Design published its accessible project page on 29 January 2021, describing the transformation as a multi-level stacked home. The detailed project information comes from the ArchDaily profile and the architects’ Union House tour.
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A 5.5-metre frontage leaves little room to spread a complete family program sideways. If all four bedrooms, shared living spaces, bathrooms, study and recreation areas were placed on one or two broad floors, the house would either need a much larger site or sacrifice rooms and outdoor functions. Union House takes the opposite route: it stacks functions above and below one another.
The central staircase is the organizing device. It links the basement and upper floors, carries the family through the house and incorporates storage along the route. Because the stair is central and exposed, movement between levels is part of the architecture rather than a hidden service corridor. The vertical arrangement also allows the home to maintain a relatively compact ground-level footprint while still providing a substantial brief.
Stacking does introduce trade-offs. Daily life involves more stairs, and separation between floors can make supervision, cleaning and carrying objects less convenient than in a single-level plan. In Union House, those practical costs are treated as part of the family experience: the stair becomes a place for movement, storage and informal interaction rather than merely a code-required connection.
The program spread across the house
The documented brief combines private rooms, shared areas, work space, recreation and roof-level outdoor space. The following figures are project specifications, not general housing standards.
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| Element | How it is used in Union House | Documented source |
|---|---|---|
| Bedrooms | Four bedrooms arranged within the stacked plan, with a flexible split arrangement created by a sliding partition. | ArchDaily project profile |
| Bathrooms | Three bathrooms, including a boys’ bathroom shaped as a blue moulded-fibreglass landscape. | ArchDaily project profile |
| Study | A dedicated study is included in the family brief. | ArchDaily project profile |
| Basement rumpus room | A recreation room below ground, connected visually and physically to the levels above. | ArchDaily project profile |
| Roof deck | An elevated outdoor room with city views; the architects describe a green roof surface. | Austin Maynard Architects tour |
| Carport | Vehicle parking accommodated within the constrained site. | ArchDaily project profile |
This mix explains why the project reads as more than a narrow townhouse. The house includes a basement, roof-level exterior space and a full family program while retaining the original street facade.
CLT makes the structure part of the interior
Cross-laminated timber is exposed through much of Union House. The architects use it for walls, floors, stairs, ceilings and doors, so the structural system remains legible from room to room. Rather than covering the frame with layers of plasterboard and decorative finishes, the design lets the pale timber establish the material character of the interior.
Exposed CLT also helps unify a home that is divided across several levels. The same surface language continues through the stair and adjacent rooms, making the vertical sequence feel like one connected volume. Storage integrated into the stair reduces the need for freestanding cupboards that might otherwise narrow circulation routes.
The material is not presented as proof of a particular environmental performance. The available project descriptions provide no verified construction cost, embodied-carbon calculation, lifecycle assessment or measured energy-use result. CLT is a documented design and construction material here, not a quantified performance claim.
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The main living, dining and kitchen area is open plan, giving the family a shared space rather than a chain of small rooms. ArchDaily describes pale CLT surfaces, Equitone cupboard doors and a vivid camellia-pink interior accent. The restrained timber background allows that pink element to read as a deliberate hit of colour instead of visual clutter.
Open planning is particularly useful on a narrow site because it lets light and sightlines travel across the available width. It also gives a family with three energetic teenagers a common room that can support cooking, homework, conversation and gatherings without requiring a large footprint.
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The kitchen is not isolated from the rest of the household. Its position within the open living area keeps food preparation connected to dining and sitting zones, while the central stair provides a constant reminder that other parts of the house are immediately above or below.
Daylight reaches the basement through the floor
Basements often feel disconnected from the rooms above, but Union House treats the lower level as part of the home’s visual network. Glass floor panels allow daylight to pass down into the basement rumpus room. One panel opens to a steep slide that drops into the space below.
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The glass is therefore doing two jobs. It transfers light, and it makes the relationship between floors visible. Family members upstairs can see activity below, while the slide turns a normally utilitarian vertical connection into play. This is a strong example of the project’s wider strategy: circulation and structure are expected to perform social and sensory roles as well as practical ones.
The basement rumpus room gives the teenagers a place for noisy or informal activities without requiring a separate building. Its position below the principal living floor also helps preserve quieter zones elsewhere in the house, although the documented descriptions do not provide acoustic measurements.
Bedrooms and bathrooms are arranged for a changing family
The four-bedroom arrangement is not described as a fixed set of identical rooms. A sliding partition creates a flexible split bedroom, allowing the household to alter how rooms are combined or separated as the children grow and their needs change. That adaptability is important in a house designed for three teenagers, whose requirements for privacy and shared space can change quickly.
The boys’ bathroom takes a deliberately non-domestic form. It is described as a blue moulded-fibreglass landscape incorporating a shower, bath, steps and hob. Instead of treating the bathroom as a collection of standard fixtures along a flat wall, the design combines them into a sculpted terrain. The steps and changes in level make the room spatially active, continuing the project’s interest in movement.
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Private rooms are distributed through the stacked house rather than gathered on one broad bedroom floor. That arrangement uses the site efficiently, but it means the family’s daily routines are inherently vertical. The sliding partition and shared bathroom landscape provide flexibility within that compact organization.
Playful routes include the cats
Union House plans for more than human circulation. A route for the family’s two Siamese cats is built into the design, giving them an alternative path through the home. The detail reinforces the architects’ broader idea that a narrow house can become richer when movement is designed rather than left to leftover corridors.
The cat route, the basement slide and the central stair all make circulation visible and varied. Residents can move through the house in different ways, and the architecture acknowledges that a family home is used by people of different ages, habits and energy levels. These features are specific to the project; they are not presented as universal requirements for every narrow house.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.The roof deck extends the house upward
With little ground area available, the roof becomes another usable level. Union House includes a roof deck that frames views across the city. The architects describe a green roof deck as helping insulate the house against solar heat gain.
That is an architect-stated design intention, not a measured energy result. The available descriptions do not report indoor temperature data, annual energy consumption, roof-system specifications or a comparison with an unplanted roof. The roof deck can therefore be understood as an outdoor room and a stated passive-design strategy, but its performance cannot be assigned a numerical value from the published material.
Retention, replacement and the character of the street
Union House can be understood through three architectural choices: keep the facade, replace the interior and stack the new program. Each choice solves a different problem.
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| Design question | Union House response | What that response changes |
|---|---|---|
| How should the original cottage remain present? | Retain and restore the street-facing brick facade while building a new house behind it. | The street keeps a familiar material and scale, while the interior is free to meet a contemporary brief. |
| How can a 5.5-metre site fit a family program? | Stack rooms over multiple levels and add a basement and roof deck. | More functions fit on the narrow block, but stairs become central to everyday life. |
| How should the new structure be expressed? | Leave CLT visible through walls, floors, ceilings, stairs and doors. | Structure, finish and circulation read as one material system rather than separate layers. |
| How can a compact house feel active rather than cramped? | Use glass floor panels, a basement slide, integrated storage and a cat route. | Movement and visual connections become experiences instead of hidden infrastructure. |
None of these choices is automatically superior to a conventional renovation or a wider, single-level plan. They represent a particular response to a narrow urban block, an active five-person household and the owners’ decision to preserve the cottage facade.
What this project shows about building up on a narrow site
Union House offers a practical design lesson for anyone considering a narrow family home: the usable area is not determined by frontage alone. A basement can host recreation, a roof can become an outdoor room, and a carefully planned stair can combine storage with circulation. The trade is that every level change must be considered as part of the family’s routine.
The project also demonstrates that retaining an old facade does not require freezing the entire building in its previous form. The new house behind the brickwork can use contemporary structure, bold colour, unconventional bathrooms and playful routes while maintaining a tangible link to the street.
For architects and owners, the sequence suggests a decision framework:
- Measure the actual site width and identify which functions can be stacked without compromising access or safety.
- Decide whether an existing facade is worth retaining for cultural, streetscape or personal reasons, rather than assuming retention is mandatory.
- Place the stair early in the plan because it will determine storage, daylight, supervision and how often residents move between levels.
- Use the basement and roof deliberately, checking daylight, ventilation, waterproofing, access and maintenance before treating them as extra floor area.
- Plan flexibility into bedrooms and shared rooms so the house can adapt as children grow and household patterns change.
What is not established about Union House
The published project descriptions do not establish a verified construction cost, completion date, measured energy performance, embodied-carbon value or lifecycle assessment. They also do not provide independent testing of the green roof, the CLT system, daylight levels or acoustic performance.
Those limits matter when interpreting the project. Union House is well documented as an architectural strategy for a narrow site and a specific family brief. It should not be treated as evidence that every stacked house will cost less, use less energy or perform better than a conventional alternative.
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Union House’s achievement is not simply that it fits many rooms onto a small block. It makes the constraints visible and turns them into experiences: the old brick facade marks the entrance, CLT exposes the new structure, the stair organizes four levels, glass floors pull daylight into the basement, and a slide and cat route make circulation playful.
For a family of five on a 5.5-metre-wide site, the result is a complete new home that grows upward and downward without erasing the cottage that once stood there. The project’s lasting idea is that preservation and transformation can happen at the same time when the retained element is treated as part of a new spatial system rather than as a frozen shell.
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