How a Sydney Couple shares their home as a Library, Shop _ Social Space, 60sqm_646sqft

When we first moved in, we noticed when we would keep the door open, there would be neighbours popping in going, oh my gosh. They would want to come in, so we'd immediately invite them over. And then we realised, why don't we just open this up to the public? It's both a private space of security and safety and everything a home should be. But it's also a kind of shared space on our own terms. My name is Mason, I'm an artist, educator and DJ as well. My name's Mariam, I'm an arts consultant, writer and community facilitator. We're currently in our converted terrace. It's also called Magenta House and we use the house as a space to share and hold events. We run micro-workshops, we have talks, we have reading sessions in the library. We have communal meals, we have a street party with our neighbours. And most recently, we also started the shop. We operate on the ground level of our house. We usually don't let people in upstairs so that we have that boundary. We moved in here January 2022. We really wanted a space where we could spend all of our time in the house and we could evolve the rooms and be a bit more multimodal. Walking into this house, the way that Adele McNabb, the architect, configured the space, it kind of felt like a space that how could you not share? The house is in Redfern, Sydney, Australia, the inner city of Sydney. We're city slickers, definitely. But what we find is even though we're in the heart of inner city, it feels like a mirage, like it's just very quiet here. The terrace here is part of a row of sort of micro-terraces, so they're about three metres wide, which is pretty small for Sydney. The custom-made sculpture by Tanika Jealous was created especially for this house by the architect. And what's so funny is that when we moved into this space, the postman would actually start putting the letters in here, thinking it was a letterbox. And so we had a letterbox installed just right there to the left. We basically bicycle around the area to do chores, to see friends. That's your delivery basket for things from the shop if someone makes an order. And I'm very clumsy, so I ended up accidentally breaking this pot plant because I wasn't used to parking the bicycle so close. This door is matching the colour of the rest of the house, and it creates a beautiful breeze through the front of the house. Yeah, it allows us to be able to be at the shop at the very end and see if somebody's coming in to check out the library. We're in the front library of the house, so just as you walk in. When we first moved in here, the bookshelf wasn't here, and we had to figure out what were the size of the shelves according to the different sized books and magazines we had. In curating these books, when Mason and I came together, we realised that we had a few similar books, which meant that I knew that we were meant to be. We decided to paint the shelves pigeon grey, or I think it's called bone grey, but I say pigeon grey because it's just more fun to say it. It actually made the books pop a little bit more than, say, painting it like a bookshelf white. We've clustered these into architecture, visual art, literature, poetry, and there's a lot of food culture books. We open up this library to the public most weekends, and it's a really wonderful way to soft lodge guests into this room so that they can discover something new. When we have guests over, I find that they usually sit down here, so it's really nice to have all these different height of seating areas to be able to really be comfortable and feel like you are at a home library and not so much like a school library, somewhere a little bit more formal. Usually when we have guests over and they wanted to have a quiet phone call or some privacy, we just close off the curtain. So that gives us a bit of a divide in such a small house. It really works. And then it also blocks or filters the light from the front here, so really kind of soft light, and also doesn't kind of interfere with the screen light. When I was a kid, I ran a pop-up library when I was at school, and the library is really an adult extension of that. I grew up in the Philippines where we had a family bakery underneath my bedroom, and so we would always have people coming in and eating and serving. So I feel that creative hospitality is in my bloodline, and it's really wonderful to be able to actually open up the space for strangers or for friends. So as we come through, there's a curved archway that separates the front and the kitchen space. We've got an amazing spiral staircase, which really helps to utilise the small area here. We use the underneath the spiral staircase as a shoe rack and also a storage area for a trestle table that peeps out from beneath the back of the fridge. Sometimes, yeah, Marion puts our bike helmets hanging here, but recently it's the hanging plants. We're always thinking about new ways to put the hanging plants. Staircase is this kind of like spiral drill that's like reaching up to the top of the house. So as we go up, we've got an amazing skylight above us, kind of carved into the ceiling, and once you see it, it's sort of such a great sculptural feature to the house. And when it rains and thunderstorms, it's really quite hypnotic to watch from down here. You can see the rain and the thunders really clearly. Issue 2 of our magazine is all about finding ways to slow down in the city. Take a cue from our sloths, but don't go slow in getting your copy because this baby is loaded with all the good things. Gentle and joyful urban art that invites us to pause, ponder and smile. Wild and wonderful architecture and design full of optimism and a determination to do things differently. There are more small homes to explore and get lost in too. Inspiration for living lighter and finding poetry in the everyday and a sh**load of bricks. Get your copy now. Visit nevertosmall.com slash store. So one thing about this bedroom is this kind of secret hidden door, which actually we only found out about like months after we moved in here. It was so discreet, hidden in the pocket here that we didn't even know it was there. We have an Eva bed here, which is really great, fits well in the space. Also has some neat little drawers here that pop out and then underneath the bed, we have a lot of storage, which is really cool. I use the drawers here for storing off my video equipment when I need to do some filming. So that's been pretty handy actually. I've got this great phone stand. Oh, there's Mariam on the cover there. This is like the Dyson remote and then the Kindle. So I'll be like this and then just be like, shutting my eyes and I'll just kind of like find the spot for it. The thing that I like most is the double height wardrobe system here. So we've got like two different rows of clothing and you'll get to see the personality of me and personality of Mason. This is what would be called a hyper clash salad of color. And Mason, what kind of color palette do you have? Tone down. But yeah, this feature is really cool. So it kind of pulls down and it's so good for just storing things that these are the stuff I don't use as much, but great to have two levels. And in here, really cool drawers as well. I've got pants here, socks and things, and then bits and pieces at the bottom here. We have our spirit stash up here, which is kind of in a hard to reach place on purpose. These great little corner shelves that Mariam usually styles with different sculptural objects and different like sort of mementos from times in our relationship and great for plants too. We do have a lot of mosquitoes they really love outside here. So the net's been working pretty well. And we do have a shade blind for the mornings if it gets too intense as well. Yeah, or sometimes we watch projections on the wall. So we'll put a projector here and that blackout blind is really good for that. This whole wall becomes like a screen. The project is underneath the bed. I've actually got to make next a little stand for the top of the bed, which will fit the projector. But it actually works perfectly on this wall. Behind here, it looks so seamless, but actually this is a lot of the bulk of our kind of laundry storage, winter clothes. We pack quite a lot in here, especially at the top here. There's a lot of laundry bags. And my ice cream maker, my trusted ice cream maker is at the top there and our bike helmet. This is an ingenious way to kind of make a discrete laundry space. It also doubles as a door to the bathroom. And it's a good way to use space and not take up space that would otherwise be taken up by a door. We've got this really nice view from the top of the neighbourhood that sort of overlooks the back studio rooftop. And there's a sort of self-sustaining succulent garden there. And I think Maryam more has baths than I do. But when you do have a bath, you can sit there and sort of look out to the neighbourhood. It's a great view. One great thing about the bathroom is it continues this spider marble from the downstairs kitchen bench. Above it is just simple plywood shelving. And we've got these mirrored sort of vanity storage areas. This is Maryam's. She fits a lot on the shelves here. I'm a bit more simple and minimal on my side. How I wash my face is like this because I'm quite a birdbath face washer. So I try not to get splashes on the sink so Mason doesn't have to clean up after me. The ceramic tiles are a great feature. They also carry through these earthy tones throughout the house. And these are heated towel racks, although we don't really use the heated function. We just use it to hang a towel on top of. Here we are in the kitchen and it is anchored by this really beautiful golden spider marble that Adele McNabb had placed in. So this island is a breakfast bar, but it's also a dining table sometimes. We're able to actually use this space as a stage of sorts. So usually we'll have a chef or a teacher be at this part of the table talking to the students. The bottom shelf is usually pots and pans. These double height shelves with stands that Maryam got are really helpful to kind of stack things. And we love these spinning containers because it really helps you to access things that are stored at the back. This is a secret little power outlet that just comes out of the ground. So it's perfect for any type of appliance or charging your phone or laptop. So we've been living in this home for about three years and we only discovered that this pendant light can actually go up and down. Pretty nifty discovery to be able to find out after being here for so long. I have hit my head a few times on that. Well, now you don't have to. I can make it really high now. It's quite a lot of storage up high as well. All my vinegars and scobies that I'm hiding behind there. I just make just these labels. This is just a way to be able to figure out what's all the way up there. Kind of just reminds you of like, oh, that's the area for this type of thing. It's like, okay, the tea stuff is here. If it's tea related, it should go there. And this is a shoe rack that I've used for the spices because they look quite cool on an angle. This is a ceramic artwork by Michelle Bodson-Prowse. It's supposed to be an Aesop bottle and I accidentally one time put it next to the real one and then I pressed on the wrong one and it broke. So I'm sorry, Michelle. I will probably contact you now that everybody knows that this has happened. So this one is a dishwasher. We actually didn't even know this was here until a few weeks in. We actually don't use it that often because I prefer to hand wash, but it's great when we do have a big number of guests, we can just chuck them all in there. And then under the sink is just like cleaning products and then garbage. This drawer kind of comes out as well. Stepping into the courtyard from the kitchen, we're greeted by this fern tree, which kind of hugs the safari windows. So they come up and down on this hydraulic system, which is a great way to kind of also protect the sun and also rain. And the beautiful thing about this space is like a sort of threshold between this pavilion and then the back studio. So it's like a refresher when you go from one space to the other. It's like you're entering another zone. Yeah, and this internal courtyard is where we have supper clubs, communal meals. Even though I'm from the Gold Coast, I haven't really used this shower outside, but we just use this to water our plants. So they're getting the benefits of the shower. The tree before, the fern tree, was a beautiful grass tree, but unfortunately it got root rot. So we're really sad. We had a candle vigil to send off the tree and then we had to replace it with this one. But the beautiful thing about this fern tree is the thin trunk. So it offers more space to move around. And as Mariam jokes, we can fit three more guests for a dinner party. It will hopefully provide a kind of shade canopy across the whole courtyard. This is the entrance to the second bathroom of the house. So as you open up, there's a small sink and toilet there. Another innovative thing about this house is the double doors that open up. So when we are moving furniture in or when we have a big crowd of guests, for example, for a long table, we can actually put this out to the back and extend this table up to the tree. This is basically where guests come in to be able to browse through our publications and products. And they can also listen to Mason DJing as well. We didn't intend to open up a shop when we moved in. So this was a recent addition. The objects here focus on food cultures, heritage ventures, and experimental practices. So if you come here, you eat something or you listen to an artist talk, you're able to take home that experience with you physically. So this is the IKEA shelves, which we painted in the same color as the bookshelf. They almost match the color tone of the wall. So they feel quite seamless. These are just similar IKEA shelves that are really easy to pack down. So they're very versatile and modular. There was a flood and a tree fell down. And so there were all these branches outside our home. So I just took one of the branches and made them into a little hanging system. So this is the sliding door for the other entrance to the bathroom. I really love this color as well that the doors painted and also the wood textures in here. Sydney is a very expensive city to visit. And so what we found is that we were able to invite friends or artists who are visiting Sydney, a space where they can stay here. So this couch doubles up as a bed and we're able to offer an artist residency of sorts, and they can escape through the back door without us knowing. Exactly. We've tried so many different configurations in the house. We've just had to figure out ways to make everything modular. I guess the big adjustment is like thinking about rooms as multimodal rather than a single use. The furniture Tetris was a real thing as well, trying to find the couch or chairs that fit into this three meter wide space without having to sacrifice walking space. Everything now is small or packable and rather than having like one big chunky object that kind of dominates the space. When we originally moved into the house, this was actually a TV storage area. And then I wanted a place to put my vinyl records and I realized that it could house just two levels of vinyl records. So I installed this shelf in here and removed the cover. And then it has this amazing wooden bench here, which leads into a sink. We put this piece of sculpted material from my studio to cover it so you can put drinks on top. And then that leads into this area, which is the custom DJ booth that I made. And it's got little sort of nooks. So this comes out to hide all the cords at the back of the mixer. And everything's kind of just measured to fit all the equipment I have. Underneath is just the simple Ikea Kallax shelf. It's just plywood that I stained the similar color to the backboard. It almost feels like the places that I DJ are like a small bar, but it's inside the house. Other exit or entrance to the house through our back alleyway. It's really great to escape here discreetly if I have a DJ gig or if we have people around, they can have an alternative entrance. This is the back of the DJ records, but also doubles as storage. So I've got a little key here and it's quite a lot of things packed in here. I actually use this to clean the alleyway if we have guests. And twice a year, we team up with our neighbors to throw a street party in this alley. And we've called it bin alley, bin alley, because clearly there are bins in this alley. It's a free get together that lasts all day. And we have DJ sessions. We have food stalls. And it's a really fun way to get to know the neighborhood and have that social cohesion. Most of my family are overseas. And I come from a tiny family in Perth. We share that thing of not having our own families here, but we kind of cultivate a different type of family through the house. But I can also use the bench to grab... I like thinking about ways to store things, whereas Marianne's more of an accumulator. You'll open the cupboards and things will fall on me and I'll be like, that's okay. The house has taught me a lot to live consciously in a small space and be more conscious about what I buy or not buy. The architect Adele has thought about every single inch or centimetre of his house so thoughtfully that, yeah, I think any major changes would just throw off the whole balance of what she's designed. Yeah, it's a surprisingly adaptive space, even though it's a small space. Adele has done a great job with smart design.