Innehållsförteckning för Issue 146 June 2022 från Houses

For many of us, as the cooler weather sets in and the days get shorter, the appeal of spending time ensconced at home intensifies. The homes explored in this issue demonstrate the different ways architects and designers create opportunities for respite from the clamour of everyday life. Always by Kennedy Nolan (cover and page 26) is a refuge from city life, where a richly layered interior devoid of harsh contrast achieves an atmosphere of comfort and welcome languor. Also in this issue, we look at a number of homes that show how the imperfections of houses from past eras can be adapted to suit the demands of modern life. Examples include the Noosa Heads House by Vokes and Peters (page 54), a resourceful remaking of a suburban beach house; Cascade…

Brett Seakins Can you tell me about yourselves and the journey you took to arrive here? Glenda Having lived regionally for a long time, the past 18 years of which was spent running a 500-acre cattle farm in Strathbogie in northern Victoria, we decided that it was a “now or never” moment to embark on a new chapter, otherwise we would end up retiring on the farm. We love to travel regularly, having experienced some remarkable places such as the Outer Hebrides and self-driving adventures across Africa, which was becoming increasingly difficult to do while running the farm. We were ready to retire from the farm, move elsewhere and free up more time for travel. After casting the net wide for possible locations to move to, we settled on Melbourne…

Find more residential products: selector.com and productnews.com.au 01 Hinterland Stool Named for the Byron Bay Hinterland that inspired it, the Hinterland Stool finds a contemporary expression for a robust, country aesthetic. Distinctive legs with two profiles support a generously sized, sculpted timber seat. Designed by Daniel Boddam. danielboddam.com 02 SP01 Rugs Australian design brand SP01 has released its first collection of richly textured rugs. A variety of influences and hand-tufting techniques are combined with distinctive graphic forms. Four designs are available in four palettes, offering an appealing balance of unity and versatility. spacefurniture.com.au 03 Casa M for The Village Italian stone company Salvatori invited eight designers to create miniature buildings that explore their idea of home for a series called The Village. Casa M by Vincent Van Duysen is born out…

It’s a far cry from Fitzroy North to the Palace of Versailles, yet an inspired insight into Louis XIV’s spectacular gardens elevates Eastham Street, a modest alteration and addition by Muir. The French have a way of elevating almost everything with an architectural sensibility – take the vertical confectioneries of Marie-Antoine Carême, who said, “Most noble of all the arts is architecture, and its greatest manifestation is the art of the pastry chef.” It is treillage – the art of trellising – that underpins the transformation of this double-fronted Victorian house for a retired couple into a contemporary home, at once strategic and magical. There are no sugar puff moves here: Muir uses the ingenuity of the treillageurs – specialist trellis builders – to fold together interior, garden, roof and…

Mid-March 2020 turned out to be one of those “where were you?” moments. Everyone remembers where they were when the Australian government announced widespread restrictions for the nation after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. We looked around our homes, bewildered, not knowing that – particularly for Melburnians – these spaces would become our places for rest, work and play for the following two years. The subsequent confinement had many of us examining our homes with newfound scrutiny, with endless hours to contemplate how best to adapt our living arrangements to the post-pandemic world. An exhibition curated by the Architecture Et Cetera Lab invited a selection of architects and designers to propose alternative conceptualizations to one or more of their built residential projects, in order to…

Dirk Yates Writer Brisbane-based Dirk Yates leads the multidisciplinary studio practice Speculative Architecture, specializing in the design of public buildings and experiences of art. He is currently working on the design of a secondary school, a temple and integrated artworks. Alexandra Brown Writer Alex Brown is an architect and senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Monash University. Her research and practice explore twentieth-century and contemporary art–architecture relationships, as well as architecture and radicality from the 1960s onwards. Jemima Retallack Writer Jemima Retallack is a co-director of Retallack Thompson, a Sydney-based architecture office established in 2016. The practice is interested in creating timeless and enduring architecture, and focuses on the human experience of place. Stuart Symons Writer Stuart Symons is a mid-century architecture historian, the founder of Modernist Adelaide…

Flinders is quite a special place. Certainly picturesque, it is an exclusive locale on the eastern edge of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, sleepy – even a little reclusive – when compared to the more brash rota of towns on the other side of the peninsula, facing into Port Phillip Bay. This house is named Always, a reference to the statement “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.” The design approach manages to deliver several important things for its appreciative owner, and the Kennedy Nolan team has made good on some clearly articulated, shared aspirations to get to a satisfying result. It is good when a house design is genuinely aspirational. The definition I invoke here is truer to the literal meaning, and we can set aside the use of that word…

Dean Norton established his eponymous studio with the desire to have freedom in his design work. To have full creative expression and control, to design functional pieces that are artistic statements and stories, and to not be limited by a client brief or budget. British-born and Melbourne-based, Dean studied graphic design and interior design at the University of the Arts London, after which he worked on retail and commercial projects, including custom furniture and fixtures for high-end clients. “I loved designing custom pieces because we didn’t have a limited budget and the brief was to stand out, so I could express myself creatively,” he says. He decided furniture design provided the creative freedom he was seeking and launched his own studio in 2017, debuting the Moodlum collection in 2018. “The…

You might well be familiar with the witty, carefully executed work of Melbourne architecture practice Wowowa Architecture. Led by directors Monique and Scott Woodward, the practice has been growing assuredly since it was founded in 2010 and now encompasses a team of 14, which works across its assertive collection of residential work as well as an increasing number of education and public projects. Based in Collingwood, on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurring people of the Kulin nation, the practice recently established a presence in Perth, on the unceded land of the Whadjuk Noongar people. There’s a shiny, impossibly fresh edge to everything Wowowa touches. Often described as “playful” and “bold,” their work is almost always recognizable, yet without ever subscribing to a singular architectural style. Think of…

Hood House, named for the distinctive window shroud at the rear of the home, could easily have been given the moniker Phoenix House. The architects at Mihaly Slocombe had designed, documented and navigated an arduous town planning process for this single-fronted terrace in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Carlton, only to have the project permanently shelved just as tool belts were being strapped on, when the clients opted to sell the property. Fortuitously, however, a couple retiring from farm life in regional Victoria found what they were after in both the house and its proposed reworking. Hood House was to rise again. Even more fortuitously, new owners Glenda and Alistair were enamoured with the design as it was, avoiding the need for a lengthy reassessment process at council. The only amendments…

In January 2020, when architect Christopher Furminger established his Brisbane practice, he was oblivious – as we all were – to the upheaval that lay ahead for the world. Yet, despite the pandemic-driven challenges affecting the building industry, his innovative architecture has been making an impression. Before training as an architect, Chris worked as a builder and carpenter on a range of projects in Brisbane and Ipswich, including modular housing for Hutchinsons Builders. As an architecture student at the University of Queensland, he continued to work as a builder, but realized that he needed more direct experience, which led to three years of working with Plazibat Architects. Then, in 2017, John Ellway introduced Chris to James Russell, thinking their skill sets would go together well. At James Russell Architects (JRA),…