A robust and efficient little building designed to take advantage of the rear street frontage of a property in Fitzroy and provide future flexibility for the family in the main house.

The main downstairs space is a garage designed and soundproofed to allow easy conversion to a music studio or ground level workspace adjacent the rear courtyard of the house. The upstairs space is able to augment the main house or be “locked off” to become an independent tenancy with separate rear street access.

The unusual property has a strip of land, previously a privately created ad-hoc laneway, along the entire length of its southern boundary. This new rear building straddles this forgotten intersection: a two storey white brick portion housing the main spaces on the northern corner, with a single storey portion with black timber weatherboards containing the service spaces on the now defunct laneway. The now erased intersection between the rear street and defunct laneway is also remembered with a gesture in the new building – a deliberately overscaled corner protruding window for the upper level tenancy – providing unusually expansive views over the rooftops to the east and over the roof of the heritage protected cottage to the south.