Noble salvages

A kitchen bench made from a recycled bowling alley.

The bespoke chandelier suspended above the Cubo house's new central stairwell could be called ''staircase descending a staircase''. Like Duchamp's cubist painting Nude Descending a Staircase - mocked by one art critic as ''an explosion in a shingle factory'' - the house's old staircase has been ''detonated'' and abstracted. Part of Phooey Architects' latest ''upcycling'' project, the demolished former staircase now hangs in fragments, transformed into a chandelier.

There are two approaches to adapting and reusing existing buildings and materials, Phooey co-director Peter Ho explains. They can perform the same function, such as pulling out a window and simply reusing it as a window. Or materials can be given new life and an alternative function. ''That's where it fits into upcycling,'' he says.

''Generally, the industry knocks something down, sends it to somebody else and it's recycled,'' Ho says. ''What we try to do is keep things on site. Our whole perspective is to demonstrate that we can take responsibility for the things that we consume.''

A chandelier made from a staircase.

Pushing the tattered envelope of salvage materials, Ho and his partner, Emma Young, transform balustrades into door handles, form whole walls with salvaged windows, and ''upcycle'' security screens into sun-shading devices and external screens. Meanwhile the brick walls of the extended building envelope have been recycled and reframed as cubes, a nod to the surrealist cut-up technique ''cubomania'' that inspires the firm's approach to recycling.

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Breathe Architecture also employs the cut-up technique in the foyer of its Commons apartments in Brunswick. Like Phooey's Cubo house, the Commons is a notable entrant in this year's Victorian Architecture Awards.

''The old blond brick warehouse on Anstey station was totally covered with graffiti,'' Breathe design director Jeremy McLeod says. Bricks salvaged when the building was demolished were reused in the lobby, making a virtue of the graffiti.

The rear of Cubo house.

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Noble salvages