���������

MCGIRR COURT APARTMENTS

SYDNEY NSW | 1948

Reginald Edwin Grout (architect and civil engineer) for NSW Housing Commission

The McGirr Court apartments is a single site infill project of medium density that was one of the first projects built by the Commission as part of the Sydney slum clearance program. The building explored how the journey from the public street to the private home differed in an apartment building compared to detached dwellings, a design concept also popular internationally at the time.

The apartment complex faces the street as a U shape building that surrounds a large, garden courtyard. The arrangement relates the building directly to the street and provides urban greening, while still ensuring a threshold space that sets back the building and shelters residents. 

Access to the building is through elevated ‘gangway’ concrete bridges and four sets of staircases. This helps create more intimate groupings of homes within the larger building and avoids long internal corridors. 

All apartments run the width of the building, allowing the open plan living and dining room to occupy the full width of the home, as well as providing superior light and ventilation. The functionalist building is unadorned and employs a restrained palette of face brickwork with simple timber windows.