Onslow St. Townhouses

Jeffrey Howett, Architect.

1969.

36 Onslow St, South Perth.

Jefery Howlett’s mansard townhouses feature again in South Perth after a couple of years after the construction of Trinity College, UWA, (St Columba College for the Uniting Church at the time.) Only here Howlett had the terracotta tiles are painted white, a progression towards the purity of Modernism. Unlike buildings with traditional mansard roofs, containing space for attics, the Onslow street town houses' terracotta-tile clad upper-storey are consumed as separate units. The architect’s stealthily technique of reinterpreting the traditional mansard roof by providing a separate unit inside of it not only proposes a double in the amount of housing as separate units but also blurs the boundary of what constitutes a unit if the Mansard roof is indeed represented a wall or a roof.