Northside House
Bronze on the world stage
A Clifton Hill heritage home we built with Wellard Architects took Bronze at the 2022 Brick in Architecture Awards, earned a 2023 Houses Awards Commendation, and travelled through five publications.
Awards · Clifton Hill · 6 min read
In 2022, a jury in the United States looked at a heritage home in Clifton Hill and placed it on the world stage. The Brick Industry Association’s Brick in Architecture Awards judge built work from across the globe, and Northside House, designed by Wellard Architects and built by our team, took Bronze in the International category. The credit line reads Mason Contractor: Prolifica Building. We are proud of every word of it.
Northside House is a Federation-era home on a prominent corner site, reworked for a young family of four. The brief asked for sensitive alterations and additions to intact heritage fabric, 310 square metres resolved so that the new form and the old house hold a respectful conversation across a courtyard.
The face-pressed red brickwork of the existing house was in excellent condition, and we wanted to tie this in. Wellard Architects, in Dwell
One house, five publications
The brickwork the award recognised carried the project into print around the world. ArchDaily published the completed home and holds a professional profile for our studio. Dwell covered it in August 2022 under the headline about a radical skylight suturing a heritage home to its addition. The Local Project filmed it for print Issue 09. Brickworks wrote the case study. Yellowtrace featured the terracotta shingle facade.
A home for a family of entertainers, with its legible form and honest material palette, Northside House embodies generosity and warmth. The Local Project
And at home, a commendation
In 2023 the Houses Awards, run by Architecture Media and judged by the profession, gave Northside House a Commendation for House in a Heritage Context. For a builder, that category means everything. It is not a prize for the loudest form. It is recognition that new work sat down beside hundred-year-old fabric and neither flinched. The same year the project was also shortlisted for Residential Design at the Australian Interior Design Awards.
Our part in that is the part you cannot see. Brick coursing matched so the eye cannot find the join. A skylight junction that had to be watertight and invisible at once. The discipline of protecting intact heritage fabric while a new structure grows through it. When the photographs travel this far, it is because the tolerances behind them held.
Northside House was our reminder that quiet work travels. We did not chase the coverage. We laid the bricks properly, and the bricks did the talking.
Prolifica Building Co., Building Better Living