This Melbourne practice is building a suite of finely resolved residential projects that are experimental in form and rich in texture and materiality.
A monolithic masonry wall contrasts with delicate steel balustrades and window frames at South Yarra House.
Contemporary art is woven through the work of Pop Architecture, but the thread is less about the artworks themselves than the process that underpins them. My conversation with directors Justine Brennan and Katherine Sainsbery veers from the moody mid-1980s suburban streetscapes of Bill Henson to the intricate photorealistic portraits by US artist Chuck Close.
“When we get a new project, we find ourselves looking for art references of that era or a complementary era, rather than looking for architectural precedents,” says Justine.
Based in Fitzroy in Melbourne’s inner north, the practice has been in operation for nearly six years. The six-person team delivers finely resolved residential projects that are experimental in form and rich in texture and materiality.
Practice directors (L–R) Katherine Sainsbery and Justine Brennan.
The pair came to architecture via different routes. Originally from South Gippsland, Justine grew up in a house of educators and enjoyed the balance of creativity and constraint offered by architecture. In contrast, Katherine says the Sainsbery household was full of conversations about architecture, cities and landscape: her mother had studied town planning, and her father, David Sainsbery, was a director at Architectus for three decades. Today, David lends his expertise to Pop Architecture, acting as consulting senior architect.
The directors’ early career experiences – Katherine at Lyons and Wood Marsh, Justine at Architectus – exposed them to projects of varied scale and scope, and that rigour continues to play out in their work today.
Their interest in infrastructure and education design subtly shaped the South Yarra House – a single-storey addition to a double-fronted Edwardian home, with interiors by Beatrix Rowe Interior Design and landscape design by Amanda Oliver Gardens. In this project, a critical intervention was the addition of a large-scale clerestory window at the entry, which floods the interior with light and frames a view of the canopy of a neighbouring eucalypt. “That’s an idea we consider in a lot of our projects, trying to create an arrival space – a bit of that Japanese idea of a genkan, where it’s part mud room, part entry,” Katherine says.
South Yarra House (with Beatrix Rowe Interior Design) combines confident formal expression and brave material selection.
At the rear, a corbelled brick form rises up to a roof terrace. The almost-civic juxtaposition of monolithic brick with slimline steel window frames and balustrade brings a delicate balance to the rear elevation. “We often use the finer elements to take the edge off some of those stronger, more brutal moves,” Justine explains.
Formal experimentation is evident in the Fallow House, too. Located in Melbourne’s south-east, it exemplifies many of the techniques the practice uses to break down mass, exploring twin themes of texture and proportion. Pop Architecture collaborated with Karyne Murphy Studio for the interiors, while the landscape design was by Amanda Oliver Gardens.
Angular planes wrapped in fluted stone tiles give Fallow House a distinctive facade.
The Fallow House facade is a delicate composition of planes, finished in vertical fluted stone tiles. “It’s expressed in a vertical composition, and the grout colour changes horizontally so you read it as full-height panels of stone,” Katherine says. “The fluting is beautiful in sunlight – you get this ribbed effect, and it contrasts with the plinth below.”
“The thing that we love about bricks is that you can have a big monolithic surface, but it has a lot of depth and texture, and the way that light can play off it gives a lot of variation,” Justine adds.
Materiality also underpinned the practice’s deft reinvigoration of the Ivanhoe East House. Perched on high ground above Yarra Flats in Melbourne’s leafy inner north-east, the house was originally designed by Hipwell, Weight and Mason circa 1960.
At Ivanhoe East House, careful alterations celebrate the home’s modernist heritage.
The Pop Architecture team studied the home’s original plans, which featured in Neil Clerehan’s Best Australian Houses in 1961. One element that had not survived the intervening six decades was the concertina screens that enabled the living spaces to be reconfigured. “We introduced sliding panels that were part translucent glazing and part woven cane, which was an original material repeated throughout the house,” Katherine says.
The team prioritized materials that were consistent with the original palette, or playful additions that you could imagine might have existed at the time, such as bright blue taps in the bathroom and Coco Flip pendant lights, which shared the home’s modernist aesthetic.
“There’s so much good stuff in those original Australian modernist homes,” Katherine says. “The function-ality of the plan is amazing, the view lines, the natural light – I hope our houses are like that.”
Published online: 30 Sep 2022 Words: Peter Davies Images: Willem-Dirk du Toit
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A monolithic masonry wall contrasts with delicate steel balustrades and window frames at South Yarra House.
South Yarra House (with Beatrix Rowe Interior Design) combines confident formal expression and brave material selection.
Angular planes wrapped in fluted stone tiles give Fallow House a distinctive facade.
At Ivanhoe East House, careful alterations celebrate the home’s modernist heritage.
Pop Architecture introduced glass and cane sliding panels in tribute to an original design feature that had been lost.
Practice directors (L–R) Katherine Sainsbery and Justine Brennan.
Architecture Media acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land and waters of Australia.
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