Project Archive - Nash Street

A conversation about designing Nash Street, a home for many lives and contradictions.

So, tell me about Nash Street.

Well, to start with it’s a house for multiple people living together in non-nuclear family living situation. It’s not a house about neat divisions or perfect order - it’s a house that’s meant to feel lived in, a little chaotic, full of corners and stories and remnants of other lives.

That sounds like a beautiful starting point. What was the brief like?

The brief was very clear: it shouldn’t feel new. It should feel like a place that’s been added to over time - an accumulation. The existing house had already gone through a few rough modifications, none of them very good. So instead of starting again, we looked for what could be saved.

We’re making handles from the old timber architraves, salvaging the laundry tiles, reusing whatever we can. Even the new pieces - like a shaving cabinet - are being built from salvaged timber. The vanities are old pedestal basins. We’re really trying to avoid unnecessary joinery or new materials wherever possible.

There’s a strong sustainability thread, but it feels more intuitive than technical.

Exactly. It’s not about ticking sustainability boxes - it’s about finding beauty in what already exists. Builders often overorder materials, especially tiles. They order extra to cover for breakages or shortages, and they rarely end up using them all. Those leftover tiles usually end up on Facebook Marketplace or just sitting in a garage somewhere. So we’re tapping into those everyday waste streams - what’s already circulating in the building industry - and using that as a design resource.

It’s a small gesture, but it reduces waste, reduces cost, and, more importantly, it makes sustainability feel accessible and unpretentious.

And how does that approach carry through to the way the house is structured?

The layout follows the same non - hierarchical logic as the household. There’s no “master” bedroom, no ensuite that only one or two people get to use. There are two bathrooms, and everyone has access to both. There’s a flexible living area that can be enclosed - so people can find privacy - or it can open completely, turning into a communal space for everyone.

The house is designed as a thin, north-facing strip. That allows the kitchen, dining, and living areas all to face the garden equally. It’s not just the living room that gets the best view; every shared space connects to the outside.

There’s a real sense of generosity in that plan - no one gets the “best” spot.

Yeah, exactly. It’s democratic. And the garden is a big part of that too. The client has a background in landscaping, so the design of the garden and the house evolved together. There’s this ongoing dialogue between inside and out.

They also make lead lights - the coloured glass kind - so a lot of the lighting in the house will come from handmade, recycled pieces. It’s this mix of the practical and the sentimental: trying to be sustainable, but also wanting to live in a home filled with strange, beautiful and joyful things.

That’s such a lovely contradiction — sustainable but also maximalist in feeling.

It’s totally that. There’s always this tension between wanting to be the kind of person who lives minimally, who only has what they need - and the reality of being someone who loves texture and clutter.

I think that’s one of the things I’ve learned through this project: it’s tempting to design for the person you wish you were. The person who needs the 900mm-wide oven or the walk-in pantry. But the real challenge - and maybe the more honest kind of design - is accepting who you really are. For my clients, that meant acknowledging that they’re “one-pot dinner” people, not banquet hosts.

That’s quite tender - designing through self-acceptance.

Yeah, it’s humbling. Good design isn’t about idealising a lifestyle; it’s about creating a space that holds your real life, your quirks and contradictions.

To bring some order to all the chaos of salvaging and reusing, we developed a kind of traffic light system. Green means easy to source second-hand, orange means difficult, red means almost impossible - and things that would compromise energy or water efficiency. It’s a way to stay realistic while still staying true to the spirit of reuse.

It sounds like the project is as much about process as outcome.

Exactly. The process is the design. Every decision - what to reuse, what to rebuild, what to let go of - becomes a kind of self-reflection. You learn what really matters, what’s worth holding onto.