You can tell a lot about a city’s social history and the people who live there from its domestic architecture. That why it fascinates James Voller, the New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based artist who sets off round the globe in search of homes that make each place unique. He’s looked at Melbourne’s Italianate bungalows and worker’s cottages, San Francisco’s Victorian houses and Queensland’s, well, Queenslanders. And for his latest project, he’s set his sights on Sydney’s most iconic housing: the humble terrace.

Terraced is part of the City of Sydney’s Art & About Sydney, an ongoing, year-round program of temporary art projects in unusual spaces. Voller’s thing is juxtaposition: shifting a familiar sight from its everyday environment to make us stop and notice. Last year, for instance, he superimposed worker’s cottages on to trams as part of Melbourne Festival. And in this case, he’s photographed terraced houses in Darlinghurst, Redfern and Surry Hills and blown up large-scale images of them to install in spaces around the CBD. The result is uncanny, arresting and – says Voller – slightly comedic. Imagine the surprise of a bus driver – the city streetscape etched on their retinas – turning down Wynyard Street to see a batch of newly sprung terraces, or the ironic image of work-weary commuters waiting at a bus stop in front of a cosy-looking house.

The contrast achieved when placing two familiar – but usually separate – architectural styles together is effective. “Like they’re having an interesting conversation with each other,” says Voller. He likes the double-take reaction his work provokes in the street, although the idea is not to trick people, “but to make them look a bit harder at the spaces they take for granted.” The artworks also take on an experiential edge when people start hunting for them all: look out for these ones on walls on Wynyard, York and Barrack streets, as well as an installation of mini, three-dimensional terraces on the MLC Centre steps. A healthier pursuit, perhaps, than Pokémon Go?

For Voller, there are a few factors that make a Sydney terrace house unique. Their narrowness, for one, and the sheer number that loop around the CBD: from Millers Point to Chippendale and Darlinghurst. But it is the character of some of the unrenovated homes that really captivated him. A Sydney fixture since 1830, the terraced house has been home to a diverse range of the population and today, each terraced street is a litmus test for gentrification.

“I focused on the ones that could tell me a bit more about who’s lived there, that reveal a bit more of the history, rather than the nicely done-up terrace. Those ones are beautiful, and they’re great to look at, but when I was thinking about what makes a great installation, it was definitely the ones with more character that worked a lot better, especially when you place them in the CBD environment. There’s a nice contrast of textures.”

Aesthetics aside, charting the changing fortunes of a city suburb is something that inevitably happens in Voller’s work. “I’m quite interested in those areas of change or gentrification,” he says, “and I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, I’m just documenting that change.”

Ultimately though, Voller aims to help people appreciate what’s unique about Sydney – or whatever city you happen to find yourself confronted with an image of your own home in the unlikeliest of spots. It’s working, he thinks, “if you get a few people thinking about those ideas, and what’s unique to their place and time.”

Terraced runs until Sunday 30 October in various locations around Wynyard, York and Barrack Streets and the MLC Centre steps.