A House for Grandma, Sydney — Brcar Morony Architecture

Independence as the brief

The granny flat is an old typology; the difficulty is making one that is genuinely self-contained without diminishing the main house. On a 968 m² site on Sydney’s Upper North Shore, Brcar Morony Architecture was engaged to renovate and extend an existing single-storey home. The secondary dwelling was part of that brief and the site master plan from the outset — a way to maximise the site’s potential and give the client options.

The new dwelling replaces an underused garage to the rear and side of the house. It is physically attached to the main home, but it has its own pedestrian entry, its own street address and dedicated utility meters. A shared entrance path ends at angular, profiled brickwork that marks separate doors to each residence. Director Natalie Brcar describes the aim as a dwelling connected to the main house “in a way that doesn’t impact the amenity or privacy of the main dwelling.”

Anchored to a jacaranda

The siting is organised around an established jacaranda on the site. The architects positioned the pavilion against the boundary, using previously idle ground between the existing house and the in-ground pool, and framed the tree with an oversized picture window and window seat. On the other side, the living space opens directly to a private courtyard, so the occupant has both a framed view and an outdoor room of their own. Operable timber screens adjust privacy as needed.

“The vision, or response, was that the architecture anchors itself to an existing and established jacaranda tree within the site, framing the view expressed with an oversized window opening to the landscape.”
— Natalie Brcar, Brcar Morony Architecture, quoted in The Design Files

Making sixty square metres feel larger

The dwelling is 60 m² internally, with an open-plan kitchen, living and dining space, a bedroom with a built-in workspace, and a bathroom with a European laundry. The private courtyard is reported at 20–25 m². Rather than enlarge the plan, the architects worked with section and sequence. Entry is through a narrow hallway with low-level glimpses of the courtyard; the hallway blurs into a dedicated but flexible bedroom, whose curved wall peels away to give curated views to the landscape.

The living space then releases the compression with an oversized raking ceiling rising to clerestory glazing, forming a void that makes the room feel larger than its floor area. Pitched and angular roof forms are a contemporary reading of the existing house’s roofline, so the addition sits as a subservient but related pavilion rather than a separate object in the garden.

Placeholder — light-filled compact living room — Placeholder — raking ceiling and clerestory idea. Photography: Justin Alexander (permission pending).

A palette chosen for supply and longevity

Materials are few and durable: recycled brick outside, honed concrete floors, oak joinery and blackbutt. The project was delivered during COVID, and Brcar notes that most finishes were sourced — and where possible produced — locally for that reason. The neutral palette is also a response to uncertainty about who will live there: in her words, the fit-out “will have longevity as we never know who the end user will be.”

One flat, many occupants

The client’s own account, published with the project’s 2023 NSW Architecture Awards shortlisting, lists what the flat has already hosted — a 20th birthday, sleepovers, trip planning, work-from-home meetings — and what comes next: overseas family and friends, or a self-contained apartment for an adult child. The architects frame it the same way, as housing for a grandparent, a young adult moving towards independence, visiting family, or a commercial letting.

That flexibility is the project’s quiet argument. In a city where land is scarce and households keep changing shape, a well-made secondary dwelling on an established lot adds a home without adding a house to the street. The wider works also included a reconfigured main bedroom with ensuite and study, a new kitchen within the existing footprint, and a first-floor addition with two bedrooms to the main dwelling.

“A House for Grandma can best be described as a genie that keeps on delivering.”
— Client perspective, Australian Institute of Architects awards entry

Team

Architect: Brcar Morony Architecture (director Natalie Brcar). Builder: Cubic Construction Management. Recognition: shortlisted, Residential Architecture – Houses (Alterations and Additions), 2023 NSW Architecture Awards.

Sources

Research drawn from published project documentation. Photography credits are for attribution only — images on this page are placeholders until rights are cleared.