Table of contents for Issue 134 June 2020 in Houses

In residential projects, there are often interesting backstories about how people find their architect. The clients of Park Road House connected with Michael Lineburg of Lineburg Wang after fancying the Sandgate Pier House in a design publication. It was a project Michael had worked on several years ago while with Brisbane-based practice Owen and Vokes and Peters, as it was then known. Something in Sandgate Pier House resonated with the clients’ own situation as they contemplated transforming their rambling four-bedroom, two-storey Queenslander overlooking a generous backyard. Retired and running a short-term accommodation business, the client couple sought to remake their home for a different type of life, creating a place that adult children would want to come back to with their own families and one that also allowed the owners…

To care for a relative into old age is one of life’s greatest privileges. It is both a challenge and a joy, and a rare opportunity for the reciprocated witnessing of life. This notion forms the basis for Kindred, an intergenerational family home designed by Panov Scott Architects. Multigenerational living is easy to romanticize and tint with noble aspirations, but this is a project born equally of empathy and pragmatism. The home’s owners, Alf and Emma, had initially moved to hilly Christchurch, New Zealand, to be closer to Alf’s parents, Nancy and Otto, who are both aged in their eighties. However, after only days in the city, with moving boxes scarcely unpacked, they were hit by the region’s most recent earthquake and decided that Melbourne’s flat, gridded terrain would provide…

When I was young, we used to visit my uncle’s holiday house on the south coast of New South Wales. It was a small shack with a deep wraparound verandah where we slept through the summer nights. That memory of sleeping under an old, timber-framed roof with a cool breeze filtering through mosquito nets has stayed with me. All kinds of locations, events and experiences inform the memory of a beach holiday, but we often develop the deepest bonds with the specific places we inhabit when we travel. In some cases, a very special building can create unique memories that lead to new habits and attitudes towards life. When I met architect David Boyle while visiting his Breezeway House – a holiday house for a family from Sydney to share…

The way we live our lives has changed considerably over the past century, yet our cultural notions of the “home” have remained broadly the same: a refuge for ourselves and our families and a repository for the objects that we value that represents elements of who we are. The concept of the home as a refuge dates back at least to the Victorian era, with a growing awareness that individuals and their children needed protection from the chaotic metropolis. The advent of modernism at the turn of the twentieth century, however, introduced a contradictory tendency, that of prospect: the home became a place from which occupants could apprehend the world and connect with nature. Designed by Taylor Knights, this elegant renovation of a 1930s heritage home in a leafy pocket…

What is a house for? Not every house is for the same thing. Well, obviously there are some common purposes – climate control, keeping the rain out, facilitating sleeping, storing things, preparing food and drink etc. This last category is normally fulfilled by something called a “kitchen,” but there is a danger in using labels – they are ready-mades, stereotypes, clichés. Better not to name it at all – that way, it is more likely to appear to you afresh, as a unique thing, a particular instance, strange. At this house in Fitzroy North, designed by BKK Architects, every space has multiple potential uses and each zone bleeds into the next. There is a place for storing and preparing food, hanging out with friends, washing dishes – the usual kitchen…

At some point during the past five years, Melbourne-based Rob Kennon Architects began using project locations to refer to the houses designed by the practice. The earlier projects retained their more descriptive titles – such as the Sugar Gum, Datum and Stepped houses – but newer builds have become known simply by their neighbourhoods: the Malvern, Northcote and Brunswick houses, to name just a few. This is not, it could be argued, an inconsequential shift in taxonomy. Rather, it speaks to a self-assuredness in the practice’s built projects. What’s in a name? This new naming convention conveys an openness to multiple readings and an associated commitment to design priorities that defy easy categorization. Fitzroy North House 02 is the second in a series of houses by Rob Kennon Architects situated…

Do it once and do it right. That was the attitude of the clients of Concrete Blonde, who wished to create a beautiful,long-lasting addition for their Federation-era house in Annandale, Sydney. “It would be the one-in-100-year renovation for this house,” the couple describe. They engaged architecture studio Carter Williamson, invested time in liaising with council and waited until their preferred builder was available to ensure they got it right first time. The clients bought their home in 2008 and sent their brief to a selection of architecture firms in late 2014. They wanted seamless, comfortable spaces in which to host family and friends, and a house that met the requirements of modern living.“The clients were very clear with what they wanted to do. They weren’t creating a trophy home, rather…

Dematerializing back into a sandstone escarpment in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo like an optical illusion sits the last home and office of revered architect Bruce Rickard. After Bruce’s death in 2010, his son Sam Rickard bought the property, now known as Rickard Studio, from the family trust and added his own design aesthetic, garnered as an award-winning production designer in the film industry and as an interior designer. Ascending the steel staircase and entering into the light-infused, miraculously spacious 100-square-metre one-bedroom studio, you immediately sense Bruce’s emotional resonance. The fusing of the natural world with organic materials and the interplay of indoor and outdoor create a home that feels distinctively contemporary, despite it having been designed 45 years ago. Not only is Rickard Studio the last in the lineage of homes designed…

01 Hardie Deck Made using premium fibre cement, James Hardie’s Hardie Deck combines durability and style. Its smooth finish is nail and splinter free, and helps prevents wide gaps between boards. Hardie Deck is resistant to damage from moisture, heat and sun. hardiedeck.com.au 02 Expression Black walls and ceilings The Expression Black series of stylish wall and ceiling linings from Easycraft combines the warmth of a classic timber veneer with a bold black profile design. It can be used to create visually impressive backdrops in residential and commercial settings. easycraft.com.au 03 Paint colours and materials Caesarstone and Wattyl are collaborating to produce a series of tailored palettes, showing pairings of colours and materials for interiors. Caesarstone surfaces and Wattyl paints are paired with metallic tapware finishes from Sussex and door…

Homeowners Sue and Rupert were charmed by the modest brick house on Marine Terrace when they purchased it in 2013. The ramshackle home comprised five original rooms and various lean-to structures that had been added at the rear over the years. Its elevated position afforded it excellent views over Fremantle’s South Beach. They lived in the house for several years while carrying out small-scale renovations internally. The house is listed on the local government heritage register and Sue and Rupert were keen to find out more about its past. They did extensive research at the local library and state archives to find early photos, which helped them to solve several riddles and to reinstate key elements, including three chimneys and the front verandah, which had been built in by previous…

This is a house underscored by dualities. Some are born of the design, others are the product of an intriguing journey the client and architect both undertook. The site for the house – a coastal getaway on a 25-hectare, rurally zoned parcel of land high above the Lorne foreshore – was purchased by a director of one of Melbourne’s larger architectural practices. After seven years on the drawing board and with a 700-square-metre house proposed (coupled with some serious budget concerns), the project came to Ben Shields of Dreamer. The project now had two architects. Initially engaged only to realize the interiors, Ben observed a disparity between the communicated desires for the house and what had been previously designed. The house was to be a modest weekender, finely tuned to…

The blousing proportions of the traditional Australian suburban subdivision now seem impossibly, and perhaps a little irresponsibly, generous. The question of what to do with this surplus space has often been answered in an unsatisfying way. Vittino Ashe has created something remarkably enchanting with very little in this addition to a home in Perth. The overall project comprises a reorganized interface with the street at the “face” of the house, as well as a new pavilion and enclosed basketball court at the rear. The works at the front of the house created a new car park and boosted security and privacy in a quiet way through the use of a timber slat fence. But it is the pavilion which is really worth chewing on. The dimensions of the room are…