In a motley Redfern laneway jammed among cottage backyards, garages and four-storey apartments are two Le Corbusier-inspired townhouses that really stand out.
Designed by Sydney architect David Langston-Jones, the colourful and complex homes showcase the indelible mark that Le Corbusier – a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter and urban planner – has left on the world of architecture.
Langston-Jones has beautifully expressed many of Le Corbusier’s signature features – colour, concrete and angles – at 4A and 4B Little Young Street, a thoroughfare that is more of a lane.
For visitors zig-zagging along the laneway – with its numerous easements and subdivisions – the front doors of Langston-Jones’ plot really stand out. Super graphic street numbers, in Le Corbusier yellow and in cobalt blue, match on each front door.
Langston-Jones and his partner bought the modest site, a small triangular-shaped block covering 153 square metres 12 years ago. They decided to replace the early 20th-century asbestos-riddled house with two townhouses – one for themselves and the other to rent.
“Both are only 80 square metres but, having lived in Hong Kong for many years, I’m used to living in small spaces,” says Langston-Jones, who moved from a larger house, also one of two in Alexandria, in Sydney’s inner south, which he also designed. “I wanted to live closer in,” he adds.
Constructed in zinc, concrete block and timber, each home is spread over two levels.
The interior finishes, such as the zinc and timber, along with the concrete blocks, respond to the exterior palette as do the colours. A mirrored lobby, distorting the space, leads to two equal-sized bedrooms at ground level and the one and only bathroom.
Nestled into the elevated site (a rise of two metres to the rear), the house’s focus is on a rear Zen-style garden designed by the eminent Japanese landscape architect and monk Shunmyo Masuno, the high priest at the Kenkchji Temple in Yokohama. The front garden was conceived by landscape architect Sue Barnsley.
Langston-Jones is used to connecting with some of the world’s most illustrious creatives, having been the project architect for Lord Norman Foster’s own home in London in 1986.
“I wanted something quite special for this garden, and Masuno is a leader in Zen-style gardens,” he says, pointing out the raked pebbles lined with a bamboo-planted garden bed that is below the stairs from the home’s first floor.
At the top of the stairs is an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area which features corrugated zinc veiling that complements the studded rubber floor – the latter also a hallmark of Le Corbusier.
To delineate the kitchen, Langston-Jones lowered the level to create a more sunken feel. Strategically placed windows light the room – celestial apertures highlight the sky, others are at ground level. “Our neighbours are only eight metres away so the only thing that’s visible from their windows are our legs,” he says.
In keeping with Le Corbusier’s palette, the joinery is a combination of vermillion red, soft blue and bright yellow. A pyramid-shaped flue in the kitchen, also made from zinc, is as sculptural as Langston-Jones’ maquette that he produced 42 years ago while studying at the Royal College of Art in London.
The painting by Syd Bull, depicting many of Le Corbusier’s colours, is as appropriate as the furniture, some designed by “Corb” and the others by Charlotte Perriand. And to take the theme to the max, there are even grass-green speakers attached to the living room wall.
As with Le Corbusier, who was well known for creating smaller spaces that were magical to be in, this townhouse resonates. And for a home merely 80 square metres in area, it’s literally a feast of ideas to explore and spaces to prompt thinking about what really makes a great home.
Is it the use of spaces, with nifty built-in desks that look onto a Zen-style-garden, or the pleasure of seeing colour come alive when placed in the right hands and creating something new?
While Le Corbusier made his mark on the world, architect David Langston-Jones will leave his own architectural gem in Little Young Street, Redfern.
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Stephen Crafti is a specialist in contemporary design, including architecture, furniture, fashion and decorative arts.