行结束丨澳大利亚悉尼

I’ve been keeping an eye on Retallack Thompson since we first published their project some time ago. This husband-and-wife duo are among the most thoughtful young architects working in Sydney right now, and Rows End is the kind of project that cements that view. The thinking here is rigorous, the execution precise, and the outcome beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with prettiness. It’s also a project that resists the obvious—a terrace house renovation in Surry Hills that asks a different question entirely: what if the most appropriate material for a traditional terrace house isn’t the traditional one?

The answer, here, is galvanised steel. Used throughout in plate and sectional form, it makes no attempt to disguise itself as anything other than what it is—and that’s the whole point.

Located at the end of a terrace row, the existing house was working against itself: heavily encumbered by tree coverage, root damage, and water ingress, its fabric was compromised. Rather than constructing new floor area wholesale, Jemima Retallack and Mitchell Thompson focused on repair and refurbishment—working with what was already there and making targeted interventions where they mattered most.

The heritage bones are treated with care. Original Kauri floorboards were refurbished; cornices and mouldings retained and repaired where still intact. Victorian room-height proportions, often the hidden luxury of the inner-city terrace, are preserved. What’s new is made clearly, confidently new—a clean delineation between old and contemporary that sidesteps the ambiguity of pastiche entirely.

The steel interventions are dimensionally fine: thin-plate walls that support new openings into existing masonry, new doors that fold back completely over the exterior wall to dissolve the boundary between kitchen, dining, and courtyard. To the rear, the courtyard itself is anchored by an off-form concrete retaining wall with integrated bench seat, the ground plane a porous pebble fill broken by custom-formed concrete sleepers.

The project’s most distinctive move is the elevated deck—an unusual inclusion made possible by a historic approval—rebuilt as an open structure of sectional galvanised steel. An existing spiral staircase, made by a friend of the owner’s, was retained and integrated into the new works. The deck’s open design filters soft light down to the living spaces below; the steel itself reflective and luminous, taking on the greens and blues of the surrounding tree canopy. Materially heavy, perceptually light.

Along the laneway elevation—a third frontage unique to the end-of-row position—a fine galvanised mesh fence balances privacy with permeability. The dappled light it casts into the rooms behind shifts throughout the day, creating something almost atmospheric out of a purely pragmatic material.

Retallack Thompson describe the project as an exploration of “incorporating alternative—and arguably more appropriate—materials into the refurbishment of a traditional terrace house; and the pragmatic and atmospheric benefits that the alternative offers.” Pragmatic and atmospheric. That’s a rare combination, and they nail it.

[Images courtesy of Retallack Thompson. Photography by Hamish McIntosh.]