Dundas Valley dual occupancy. Sydney. Ongoing –.

Plans for Dundas Valley were created in partnership with architect Carl Redfern.

The brief outlined the removal of the site’s existing small and rundown timber dwelling and its replacement by two new dwellings. 

The latter was permissible under the current Local Environmental Plans (LEP). However, new more restrictive LEP controls, scheduled for legislation, would restrict development on comparable sites in the area to single dwellings. The project therefore necessitated rapid design development and submissions of plans to council.

Early in the design process, in close consultation with the client (a local government planning professional), it was decided to pursue back-to-back dual occupancy – as opposed to a side-by-side dual occupancy – the accepted form of this type of development in Parramatta.

Back-to-back development, we reasoned, best complied with a literal reading of the Parramatta Development Control Plan 2011. It would result in the new dwellings being integrated into the topography of the site, without the façade dominating the street with its bulk or carports (as characterized by side-by-side Dual Occupancies). Furthermore, back-to-back Dual Occupancy would ensure that both buildings would have northern exposure along their critical east-west axes.

As council was not familiar with back-to-back proposals, their initial preliminary assessment stated ‘Council does not support the design of a dual occupancy being ‘back-to-back’; and that the plans in their current form would ‘most like result in refusal’!

A meeting was scheduled with council’s planning team during which the rationale and architectural merits of ‘back-to-back’ development were further strenuously argued. Plans for Dundas Valley, with minor modifications, were somewhat sheepishly approved by council a couple of months later.

The approximate Gross Floor Area (GFA) of dwelling A (located at the western end of the site, facing the street) is 143 sqm. Dwelling B is 153.4 sqm. Each home contains four bedrooms, two bathrooms and three toilets. The proposal has four under-cover car spaces.

The dwellings have been designed with an emphasis on the creation of well-designed spaces that have minimal environmental impact. The external cladding consists of treated engineered timber cladding which has a low embodied energy rating and high insulative performance (R-value (m2.C/W) 0.104).

The attached plans document the Design Development stage of the commission (which vary slightly from the finished plans). These plans record the critical dialogue between client and design team across the design development process.

The design team were grateful for the opportunity to work with a client who was a highly informed town planner and who shared the team’s goals of delivering the best possible architectural and town planning outcomes for the site.

Location: Dundas Valley
Builder: TBC
Engineer: Martin Zimmerman
Photography: TBC