Inglethorpe Avenue is located on the grounds of the Sacred Heart Monastery in Kensington, one of Sydney’s preeminent religious precincts and ‘motherhouse’ to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, a missionary congregation within the Catholic Church. The proposal draws its inspiration from the site’s unique setting, poised on an elevated sand hill between the unique nineteenth century institutional buildings of the monastery site and ubiquitous inter-war suburban houses that line the adjacent streets. The architecture is shaped to the uses of its inhabitants and spatial themes of landscape, scale, rhythm and place.

Designed as a new private residence for the MSC clergy, the plan is conceived as two distinct building blocks separated by a central atrium, their scale tuned to the surrounding context while providing instinctive patterns of intimacy, daylight, orientation and movement into the fabric of the house. The precise use of materials establishes a cohesive, contemporary character that also feels rooted in the traditional craftsmanship of the monastery building, further articulating the interstitial nature of the building — a programme that counterpoints leisure with service, public with private, embedding spaces that allows the MSC leadership to carry out their governance, pastoral work, and religious life on a site of enduring importance.

Andrew Cortese, William Saville, Wayne Henkel, Vincent Burkitt-Doyle, Annalisa Sandona

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