Once solely the domain of self-employed workers, working from home is now spreading to full-time workers at companies.
The Colour Shingle project by Krisna Cheung Architects represents an effort to scale up an emerging typology through viral repetition while maintaining architectural and design quality through imagination and playfulness.
Colour Shingle is not a standalone project.
It’s an organic progression from a prior successful design, which is arguably more representative of real-world architectural practice.
In 2016, Krisna Cheung Architects gratefully accepted the ArchiTeam Award for their project Studio Garage.
That typology-busting project tackled an architectural solution to the problem of effectively working from home.
The project was conceived at a time when working from home was fringe.
But in the Covid era, WFH has unceremoniously burst into mainstream consciousness.
Now, the need for a functionally separate form within a residential site dedicated to commercial or professional activities is no luxury.
Or some whimsy reserved for inner-city creatives and hipsters.
It’s almost a necessity these days as harried working parents know only too well.
Krisna Cheung Architects’ continuing development of this typology is an example of to how to architecturally engage with this rapid forced merging of residential and commercial design.
They are well-placed to capitalize on the working from home trend.
Their new project, which they’ve whimsically named ‘Colour Shingle’, has the fascinating distinction of being right next door to their Studio Garage project.
It is not the only other backyard project Krisna Cheung Architects has completed.
They have been exploring and evolving this typology on narrow residential sites across North Melbourne, including their own home office `Cubby Office’.
But Colour Shingle is unique because it’s right next to a previous and similar project.
The challenge with the Colour Shingle project was how to evolve an already successful design so that it’s not merely a carbon copy, while still complementing the adjacent original design.
So Krisna Cheung Architects made the same key design choice to turn the external wall into a non-structural, semi-translucent façade by employing Perspex shingles, with the stairwell placed between the false wall.
The pastel coloured Perspex shingles creating a playful polychromic ambiance inside the studio during the day and it glows like a lantern at night.
Project Details
Project size – 60 m2
Completion date – 2020
Building levels – 2
Project Team
Architecture
Krisna Cheung Architects
Krisna Cheung Architects work is based on the life of its principal, as a family of four, living and growing together in a healthy, comfortable, and beautiful home.
www.krisnacheungarchitects.com.au
Photography
Peter Bennetts
Peter’s work regularly features in the Australian publications Architecture Australia, Artichoke, Belle, Inside, AR, Monument, inside, and Vogue.
He is a frequent contributor to Wallpaper*, Frame, Mark, Dwell, Domus, Casabella, and other international publications too.
Peter’s photography has appeared in numerous books including four monographs and the two volumes of the Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture.
Peter’s architectural images have been described as having “a remarkable crystalline stillness” and he is known for his “straight-shooting” style of architectural photography, focusing on the formal, material and atmospheric qualities of a project.
Photo Gallery
Click on a thumbnail image to enlarge.
Design © 2020 Krisna Cheung Architects. All Rights Reserved.| Images © 2020 Peter Bennetts. All Rights Reserved.
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