Designed in collaboration with industrial designer Henry Wilson, this laneway house and studio serves as a prototype for narrow urban sites. Replacing two tandem car spaces at the rear of a Victorian terrace, it combines a ground-floor studio and light-filled two-level, two-bedroom home on a 56-square-metre footprint.

Bookended by glass-block walls, the dwelling revolves internally around a sculptural staircase of cast concrete treads, rising through three luminous levels. Together, the spiral staircase and walk-through ensuite to the main bedroom whittle the circulation space down to just four square metres, maximising every inch of the 4.7-metre wide building.

Raw materials have been finely crafted in unique ways that elevate the interiors and say something of the owner’s elemental palette and interest in the imperfect/ unfinished. The structural concrete slab floor was burnished for the studio. Standard travertine tiles are laid without grout-lines for a seamless flow through the living levels, where standard glass-blocks with a sandblasted face were chosen to softly diffuse light and lend privacy from the laneway.