Crafting Thoughtful Residential Architecture with Sarah Truscott Architect
At Sarah Truscott Architect we aim to create residential architecture with a unique set of architectural, social, and environmental values intrinsically woven through every project.

Creating an Architecture of Place, we:

  • Embrace the essence of the immediate landscape on your site, be that suburban or remote.
  • Thoroughly consider the context, and history of the area.
  • Tailor designs with careful consideration of each occupants’ unique requirements for spaces.
  • Focus on creating tranquil and inspiring spaces for living.

Designing Architecture for the Environment, we:

  • Select sustainable materials attuned to the local climate, as well as the context of the existing built environment.
  • Advocate for fully electric homes with solar on rooftops, and eliminate gas connections.
  • Integrate passive heating, cooling, and cross ventilation wherever possible for your thermal comfort.
  • Prefer locally sourced materials to reduce environmental impact and embodied energy in terms of distance travelled to meet your site!
  • Implement rainwater collection systems and encourage low VOC materials throughout each project.

Making Architecture of Action, we:

  • Strive to exceed energy standards, aiming for greater than the minimum 7 Star EER requirement of the current national construction code.
  • Prioritise reused and recycled materials over virgin content.
  • Evaluate existing buildings for potential reuse rather than immediate demolition.
  • Promote close collaboration with sub-consultants, including structural engineers, to understand current best-practice with regards to minimising resource depletion (i.e. utilising timber instead of steel framing where possible).

We are dedicated to crafting residential spaces that reflect and draw upon their local surroundings, prioritise sustainability, and implement actionable steps towards a greener future.

High level Colorbond Surfmist coloured Spandek cladding above brickwork walls below, on facade of residence facing the adjacent oval; residence designed by Sarah Truscott Architect in Canberra whilst working for Philip Leeson Architects

new houses

Sarah Truscott Architect designs climate and site-responsive homes suitable to your brief and budget, with an emphasis on passive solar design.

We have great delight in closely considering the landscape connection of each project to their immediate surrounding context, and greater social network. In the award-winning Lemon Wedge House (designed by Sarah as lead architect whilst working for Philip Leeson Architects), this is exemplified in the reinstatement of key planning principles gradually being lost in the local area – specifically the Radburn plan. 

We love to work closely with builders and cost consultants from early stages in the design process to help you better understand your budget expectations when balanced against your project brief.

 

Alterations and additions

We have a diverse portfolio of extensions to existing residences, ranging from a simple additional room, to complete renovations of homes combined with contemporary additions.

Whether your budget be big or small, we believe each project is to be approached with great care and vigour to achieve the greatest possible design outcome for you and your family, to enhance you existing living spaces. We are particularly interested in the adaptability of homes and buildings in general into the future for both the immediate occupants, as well as possible future residents.

With a considered series of design interventions on existing buildings along with possible additional spaces, we are often able to breathe new life into your home without the need to knock-down and rebuild.

 

Main bedroom detail with curtains, exposed blockwork, raked joint reinforcing the internal datum line and charcoal joinery, in a residential architecture project in Canberra designed by Sarah Truscott Architect whilst working for Philip Leeson Architects
Main bedroom detail with curtains, exposed blockwork, raked joint reinforcing the internal datum line and charcoal joinery, in a residential architecture project in Canberra designed by Sarah Truscott Architect whilst working for Philip Leeson Architects

Alterations and additions

We have a diverse portfolio of extensions to existing residences, ranging from a simple additional room, to complete renovations of homes combined with contemporary additions.

Whether your budget be big or small, we believe each project is to be approached with great care and vigour to achieve the greatest possible design outcome for you and your family, to enhance you existing living spaces. We are particularly interested in the adaptability of homes and buildings in general into the future for both the immediate occupants, as well as possible future residents.

With a considered series of design interventions on existing buildings along with possible additional spaces, we are often able to breathe new life into your home without the need to knock-down and rebuild.

Serene, calming kitchen with outlook into a mature leafy garden in Turner, ACT, designed by Sarah Truscott Architect

interiors

We love designing interior refurbishments where existing structures are retained, with close consideration applied to how your interior spaces may be enhanced for modern living.

Sarah is a qualified interior designer and takes the approach of designing from the inside out, focusing on the interconnectedness of internal spaces first and foremost to each other, and then to the exterior of your home.

We have worked on the redesign of varying eras of homes throughout Canberra and regional NSW, from a workers cottage in Stockton, NSW, to the modification of 1970s architecturally designed townhouses in Wybalena Grove, Cook, ACT. Our design responses are as unique as our clients, and homes which they inhabit!