Aija’s Place by Curious Practice
Aija’s Place shows how less can truly be more. Curious Practice reshapes a humble home into a layered, light-filled sanctuary through subtle and sustainable design moves.
Words HANDE RENSHAW Photos ALEX MCINTRYE Build GUESS DEVELOPMENTS Engineering SKELTON CONSULTING ENGINEERS
Perched above the treetops with a view to Awaba in Lake Macquarie, Aija’s Place is as much about outlook as it is about inward connection. Designed by Curious Practice for owner Aija and her cats, this Newcastle home quietly redefines what’s possible when minimal intervention is met with maximum care.
With a strong emotional and physical connection to her home and garden already in place, Aija approached Curious Practice not with a brief for reinvention—but refinement.
The result is a gently calibrated transformation—a home expanded not by scale, but by awareness. Curious Practice’s intervention is modest in footprint, adding just five square metres to the existing structure, but monumental in its effect. This sliver of space connects Aija’s bedroom to the lush rear garden, deepening her relationship with the landscape and offering an effortless transition between sleeping, gardening, and just being.
Rather than demolish or rebuild, the team embraced what was already there. New and existing openings have been articulated to invite in sunlight, capture breezes, and extend sightlines to the surrounding greenery. In a home designed for one, flexibility is everything—and now Aija moves fluidly through a sequence of spaces that respond to her needs, whether she’s working, hosting, resting or tending to her garden.
This sense of responsiveness defines the project. It’s not about grand gestures but about giving the home—and its occupant—room to breathe. The spatial rhythm is quiet yet deliberate. Each intervention overlaps and supports the next, enabling a new way of inhabiting the home that honours both climate and character.
By reworking rather than replacing, the project reduces waste, preserves the existing garden, and retains the established street presence of the neighbourhood. Passive design upgrades reduce reliance on heating and cooling, while material selections balance cost, durability, and conscience. Fibre cement linings, WISA form-ply joinery, and GECA-certified Marmoleum meet repurposed plumbing fixtures and exposed roof trusses—a material palette that speaks to both honesty and warmth.
Aija’s Place continues Curious Practice’s exploration into the value of minimal built intervention—a design philosophy rooted in restraint, care and context. It’s a quiet reminder that the most meaningful transformations aren’t always visible at first glance. Sometimes, they unfold in light through a window, the stillness of a garden, or the ease with which a person can move through a space.
And for Aija and her cats, that space is now perfectly attuned—to lifestyle, landscape, and to everyday living.
