parkville 'rose robin' house (2052)
DESIGN TEAM
george stavrias damien crisp PHOTOGRAPHY & styling ari hatzis Location boonwurrung country Project Team builder: well grounded joinery: cantilever building surveyor: appointed building surveyors engineer: john kyrgios esd consultant: wedged |
Our approach posed a solution to the question “How do we maintain the character of a heritage house and its ‘post-heritage’ 80s considered renovation, while enhancing functionality and improving thermal and energy efficiency?"
concept overview:
a renovated family home for a deaf family in leafy parkville, melbourne, wurundjeri country. Our design process and communication was tailored to the clients, interwoven with iterative layers of hand sketching to visually explore concepts which would have typically been verbal. |
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The leafy suburb of Parkville is known for its Victorian terraces, wide tree-lined nature strips and quiet residential streets; an oasis on the doorstep of the CBD and the university-hospital precinct of Melbourne’s inner north.
The owners, a family including children and their dog, were attracted to the Parkville home for its central yet leafy location, its mix of heritage and contemporary living, and particularly the sightlines that the extensive glazing and split-level layout provided. The family are Deaf and these sightlines allow increased opportunity for communication throughout the home that doesn’t rely on sound. The split levels, separated by stairs and mezzanines with glass balustrades, allow for views across levels and to the outside front and rear. From the living room one can see to the front door, down to the split-level kitchen and out to the courtyard and through the garage to the parkland beyond, as well as up to the split-level bathroom and mezzanine bedroom, allowing visual communication over 3 levels, inside and out. Previously renovated by owner-architect John Mitchell, the home underwent his thoughtfully planned and well-crafted renovation in the early 1980’s, and whilst the interiors were now tired and the thermal efficiency was inadequate, the house was generally functionally suitable when Stavrias Architecture were engaged to renovate the home. Stavrias Architecture were not the first architect appointed; we were approached to complete the design and documentation after their previous architect ceased practicing during Covid. No two client-architect collaborations are the same and one unique part of our collaboration was that the clients are Deaf, which meant tailoring the design communication process; for example, in person meetings were interwoven with iterative layers of hand sketching to visually explore concepts which would have typically been verbal. Similarly, no two architects will design the same. The previous architect had proposed to clad over some of the features from the 1980’s extension which were intrinsic to its character and upon Stavrias Architecture visiting the site, the care and craft from both the original heritage terrace and in particular the detailing and visual openness of the 1980’s renovation was apparent. The project aim was three-fold; to improve the thermally efficiency, to refresh the interiors, and to improve the sightlines while retaining character of the 80’s renovation. Stavrias Architecture’s minimal intervention redesign celebrated instead of concealing the existing features, something standard when considering “heritage” buildings but less common when talking about buildings from the 80’s. Sustainability, both in terms of thermal comfort and material choice, formed a strong component of the client’s brief. As building and renovating become more expensive, and especially when considering the environmental cost of embodied carbon and material waste of construction work, SA undertook a minimal intervention approach that worked with the “post-heritage” design elements. TO IMPROVE THE HOUSE'S THERMAL EFFICIENCY, ADDRESSING THE HEAT LOSS AND Heat gain from the west-facing single-glazed, double-height, glazed-roof atrium at the rear was the primary concern. This space was integral to both achieving the required communicative sight-lines of the Deaf owners as well as significantly contributing to the openness of 80s character of the home, thus the key design question became: “How do we enhance this space’s efficiency and function while maintaining its character and considering the embodied carbon?”. Our solution was in three parts: reduce the glazing, improve the glazing, and retain as much of the structure as possible: we removed its glass roof making the roof solid, and replaced tHe existing single-glazing to low-e double glazing and added retractable external solar blinds. By extending the height of the rear facade we maintained the expansive views to the parkland beyond and to the sky from both the mezzanine bedroom and the kitchen – retaining these essential sightlines while enhancing the house’s thermal efficiency. Some of the existing 80’s details were timeless; the glass balustrades and slender white steel structural posts which spoke to slim cylindrical steel stair handrails, large pivot doors separating rooms, custom glazed water collection doubling as a skylight and huge expanses of glass framing the mature trees of the neighbourhood beyond. They had been well-designed and built and had stood the test of time, and Stavrias Architecture imagined that many of these features could became sturdy design cues in our proposal. The original slim cylindrical steel elements informed the selection of white cylindrical tapware and custom designed white steel towel rails. We maintained the split levels, replacing floor finishes, with minimal updates to the floor plan and lighting plan. The laundry was relocated to give the ground floor a dedicated powder room and a custom furniture piece by Raven Mahon was commissioned for the entry to enhance the ritual of entering and exiting the home. We replanned and redesigned joinery for the internal spaces including the bathroom, powder room, laundry and kitchen to suit the family’s functional requirements and aesthetic aspirations but generally kept these zones where they were as the planning from the 1980’s remodel was mostly still relevant to how we live today. Cantilever were engaged to finalise the kitchen joinery. A new glazed garage enclosed the carport to the rear, enhancing sightlines into the garage and through to the parkland beyond. The landscaped rear courtyard space between the house and the garage remained untouched. |
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Each decision in the design process took into consideration the home’s various heritage features, the family’s aspirations for a sustainable house, their rituals of living, and balanced the need for both privacy and connection for a Deaf family that doesn’t rely on sound. The outcome is a rewarding one for both our practice and most importantly for the home’s inhabitants, in particular with playful moments like the celebration of the 80’s white cylindrical steel – a moment noticed by the clients onsite when they expressed “Ah now we see why you selected the white tapware!”.
