Adriano Pupilli Architects Grows a Timber-Finned Gable Behind a 1901 Cottage in Manly

Heritage cottages on long, narrow lots are one of Sydney's most familiar renovation problems. The street demands that the old house stay put, the family inside needs far more room than it offers, and the only place left to build is the strip of land behind it. Ghost Gum House, completed in 2025 by Adriano Pupilli Architects in Manly, faces exactly this situation. A white-painted 1901 cottage holds the street, and a two-storey, timber-clad extension of 197 m² rises at the rear for a family of six.

What makes the project worth your attention is how the old and new parts are separated. Pupilli does not attach the addition directly to the back of the cottage. He opens a central court between them, so the junction becomes a room you can stand in. The new volume also keeps the gabled silhouette of the original house, then cuts it open with glazing and vertical fins. The architects call it a playful re-imagination of the cottage. We would describe it more plainly: a renovation that neither copies the original nor sets itself against it, and that is confident enough to be a little odd.

A Cottage That Keeps Its Street Face

From the street, the project barely registers. The painted brick cottage, picket fence and magnolia remain at the front, and the timber upper level appears only as a quiet presence behind them. This restraint is a strategy. Leaving the front rooms legible as heritage makes the work at the back read as a separate chapter rather than a takeover.

Inside the original rooms, the cast iron fireplace, white mantelpiece and French doors are kept with little fuss. These spaces now serve as calmer, more enclosed rooms, a counterweight to the open plan further back. That split supports the brief for both communal connection and places to retreat without needing to explain itself.

The Court Between Old and New

The court is the strongest decision in the scheme. It is lined in timber and screened with slats above the glazing, and it holds an outdoor concrete sink, a stair and a rack's worth of surfboards. It works as a beach-house mudroom without a roof. In Manly that use is not a styling choice. The space has to handle sand, wet boards and a constant flow of children.

Around the court, the details keep changing. An angular concrete-edged bay window projects over a white doorway, and an outdoor shower sits against the corrugated-roofed rear volume. These pieces could easily look disconnected. Here they read as a small village of parts, and that seems to be the point. A family of six benefits from a house with several distinct places in it rather than one large, polished object.

A Gable Rewritten in Fins

The upper level takes the pitched-roof outline of the cottage and turns it into a lantern of glazing behind vertical timber fins. Next to a pale eucalyptus trunk, the reference in the house's name is easy to see: the fins pick up the rhythm of the trunks, and the timber cladding will weather in the same register as the bark.

The pale metal-framed corner window, set against the vertical boards and a neighbour's chimney, shows how carefully the extension handles its edges. It does not pretend the neighbours are absent. It frames them, and it adopts the suburban roofscape as part of its outlook.

Living Under Striped Light

Downstairs, the material palette is plywood walls, a concrete floor and low timber furniture, with a double-height void overhead. The fins and slats cast striped shadows across the floor, so the hours of the day become visible inside the house. This kind of effect is easy to overplay. Here it stays incidental, because the surfaces underneath are plain enough to take it.

Large timber-framed sliding doors open the kitchen and dining space straight onto the deck. A white balustraded stair with timber treads runs alongside a long window, and the concrete hallway leads back toward the kitchen. The circulation is linear, as a narrow lot requires, but the void, the stair and the openings to the deck stop it from feeling like a corridor.

Retreat Upstairs

From inside the upstairs bedroom, the gabled window and its fins become a single framed view. Sunlight stripes the oak floor and lands beside the bed. On this level the extension gives retreat a literal form: elevated rooms, partly screened, looking out through timber rather than straight into the neighbours' yards.

Colour Where You Least Expect It

The private rooms show a looser hand. A timber headboard partition with a floating bedside table organises one bedroom and leads the eye toward an angled window. The bathroom combines a terrazzo-style stone top, green glazed tiles and a peach-coloured sloped ceiling. That colour choice is where the word playful earns its place. It is a modest risk, kept in a small room, and it prevents the timber-and-concrete palette from turning earnest.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor plan shows how the long site is organised. Cottage rooms sit at the front, the court opens in the middle, and the living spaces and kitchen run out toward the garden at the rear. The first floor plan confirms that the upper level is deliberately limited to a stair and a bedroom volume, which keeps the new mass from overwhelming the lot or the neighbours.

The roof plan explains how the house presents itself from above. Tiled and ribbed pitched surfaces sit beside each other over the narrow plot, with tree canopies and adjoining houses drawn in. Old and new roofs are allowed to stay visibly different, even where they share the same pitched language.

Why This Project Matters

Australian cities are full of heritage cottages on tight lots, and the usual response is a glass box attached to the back. Ghost Gum House offers a more generous alternative. By inserting a court between the old house and the new one, Adriano Pupilli Architects gives the junction a purpose, as a working outdoor room, rather than treating it as a seam to hide. The extension keeps the gable instead of rejecting it, and it is all the more inventive for doing so.

The project also shows that playfulness can be disciplined. The fins, the bay window, the striped light and the peach ceiling all come from a consistent attitude: build a house that suits the actual life of a large coastal family, with its surfboards, outdoor showers and need for privacy. Many renovations aim for polish. This one aims for character, and you can see the difference.

Ghost Gum House Extension by Adriano Pupilli Architects, Manly, Australia. Area: 197 m². Completed: 2025. Builder: Hammond Building. Structural engineer: Partridge. Photography: Tom Ferguson.

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