Pressure on housing has two fronts, one is the insatiable desire to acquire cheap land & expand across the Adelaide plain. The other is shoe-horn infill development into small parcels of land dotted amongst the inner suburbs and City. Cairns Street is an example of the latter. Some argue this should be our main focus, but often at logger heads with the local community. In a narrow Street just off cosmopolitan Hutt Street on a site surrounded by quaint 19th century cottages medium density housing has been carefully inserted. Four row style townhouses present a single storey built form to the sensitive single storey cottage streetscape. This medium density design solution successfully resolves the heritage constraints and the complexities of urban infill with accommodation that provides a high standard of amenity and aesthetics. What these areas often need though are bright confident statements. It re-invigorates the locality. The project carries forward a modern extrapolation of the heritage typology of its context. It does this through form, scale & materials. It is a simple yet complex building in its conception. Precast and steel. Not the usual materials for a contemporary take on the humble cottage.