Project: Tiger Prawn
Architects: WOWOWA Architecture
Team: Monique Woodward, Scott Woodward, Zoe Diacolabrianos , Issy Jooste
Location: Fitzroy North VIC 3068, Australia
Project Year 2018
Photographer: Shannon McGrath
Glorified in architecture forever, the humble tiger prawn becomes a two-pronged deity for this Fitzroy North, Melbourne renovation. What started as a nickname for the brown & gold Hawthorn brick frill pattern typically adorning the apertures of Victoria Terraces – ‘Tiger Prawn typology’ was embraced by the then new clients who sought out WOWOWA for the coining.
The existing double storey Victorian Terrace’s zig-zag (almost scalloping) brown and gold brick façade was translated and embellished to form the scalloped extension to the rear, whimsically drawing a fortified silhouette in the sky.
This urban delight approaches the perimeters of contemporary living in a fresh way by championing the civic mindedness of private dwellings – glamorous front AND back.
It could be a reinterpretation of the original, something that speaks to the old but is in all ways new. The house’s heritage chic pattern was created using ordinary bricks laid in an extra-ordinary way.
The sculptural complex geometry of our form is derived from standard bricks cleverly laid too – squint, header and cant bricks. The playful nature of the weighty vertical scallop gestures are not only as grounded and powerful as the front but use it’s own solidity and curvature to express depth, a sense of relief and deep reveal windows for shading – poetic harmony at its best.
