Federation Addition, South Yarra
South Yarra, Victoria
Our clients, a professional and academic couple with two young kids, approached Bower Architecture after becoming the next generation of their family to be the owners and caretakers of a grand Federation Arts and Crafts heritage home in South Yarra, an inner suburb of Melbourne in Victoria Australia.
The original house is spectacular, solidly built and features wonderful details and timber craftwork throughout. Like many of its era, it had an earlier renovation at the rear including a kitchen and family room, but these spaces were small, dark during much of the day and had very little connection to the garden and tennis court. The existing dog-legged hallway created a further sense of disconnection between the original rooms and the extension. Our clients wished for a sympathetic addition to the Heritage home to include new kitchen, dining, living, bathroom, laundry, a pool and outdoor and service areas.
The key concepts, coming from our in depth listening and workshopping of the brief with our clients, were that the renovated house should feel light, bright and airy with views to the garden while also feeling calm and spacious, with high ceilings. It would be a connected family home with spaces for the family to come together, as well as spaces for them to retreat. Like many Bower projects another key concept was for the renovated house to flow between the indoors and outdoors and for the house and garden to feel private and secluded from the neighbours and the street.
Both loving cooking, entertaining and tennis, our clients wanted the kitchen to be the centre of the home and to make the tennis court a focus of family life and social occasions. Most of all they wanted to create a home they’re proud of that would commence the next long chapter of the home’s history.
The architecture of the addition is restrained while also proudly being a contemporary pavilion for living, sympathetic in scale, form and materiality to the original house. The use of brickwork, timber fretwork and arches are inspired by the original house, as is the juxtaposing of light (fine framed glass) and heavy elements (painted brickwork). The expansion and contraction of ceiling heights is introduced to create excitement and wonder as one enters the new spaces. The shaping of the ceiling and high skylights introduce natural light and a whimsical memory of the existing hipped roof of the heritage house via a shape that represents its interior ‘inversion’. New glazed French doors connect the new family room to the adjacent formal lounge and vice versa create views to the garden from the original room. In summer, external venetian blinds will fully shade the spaces while in cooler months the sun will be welcomed.
A builder has been appointed but sadly, the ill health of one of our clients has paused this project.
Traditional owners: the Bunurong Boon Wurrung and the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung peoples, both of the Eastern Kulin.
Landscape Design: Ben Scott Garden Design
Heritage advisor: David Helms Heritage Planning
Planning Consultant: Town Planning & Co
Awaiting Construction
