Houzz Tours
Houzz Tour: Flexibility and Fun for a Humble Home With a Heart
Step inside a Melbourne abode that can block out the world or welcome it in
The family that calls ‘Stonewood’ home wanted to stay in their neighbourhood but had outgrown their house, so when a property came up for sale on a street they had long admired, they jumped at the chance to buy it. They would never live in the newly purchased house, though – while the street had an enviable north-facing position, the house was a dilapidated old weatherboard dwelling that would have to be demolished.
Introverted and reserved by nature, and with a growing family to accommodate, the couple wanted their new home to be flexible, private, playful and spacious enough to give their young boys room to move … all within a modest footprint.
Compact in size and honest in materiality, Stonewood is a home with a big heart and a tiny carbon footprint. According to the team at Breathe Architecture, the owners wished to capture the sun, engage with their garden, open up to their community and simultaneously claim their privacy.
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple with their three young, energetic boys
Location: Melbourne’s northern suburbs
Size: 324 square metres, including decks
Breathe Architecture Project Team: Jeremy McLeod, Fairley Batch, Eugenia Tan and Janusz Choromanski
Introverted and reserved by nature, and with a growing family to accommodate, the couple wanted their new home to be flexible, private, playful and spacious enough to give their young boys room to move … all within a modest footprint.
Compact in size and honest in materiality, Stonewood is a home with a big heart and a tiny carbon footprint. According to the team at Breathe Architecture, the owners wished to capture the sun, engage with their garden, open up to their community and simultaneously claim their privacy.
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple with their three young, energetic boys
Location: Melbourne’s northern suburbs
Size: 324 square metres, including decks
Breathe Architecture Project Team: Jeremy McLeod, Fairley Batch, Eugenia Tan and Janusz Choromanski
The couple wanted to engage with the neighbourhood when they felt like it, and be able to withdraw into a cosy, sheltered home at other times.
The entire lower front facade of the home can swing open on a hinge, welcoming in light and air, while drawing the interior into the garden or further into the community domain. When the black steel and sugar gum screen is open, it allows an abundance of northern winter light to penetrate deep into the plan, warming the concrete. When closed, it gives the couple the privacy they were looking for without sacrificing on light.
The entire lower front facade of the home can swing open on a hinge, welcoming in light and air, while drawing the interior into the garden or further into the community domain. When the black steel and sugar gum screen is open, it allows an abundance of northern winter light to penetrate deep into the plan, warming the concrete. When closed, it gives the couple the privacy they were looking for without sacrificing on light.
The ‘stonemason’ pictured here was included in the photo shoot to represent the sculptural and artistic qualities that make this home so captivating.
When the swinging doors are open, the bookended deck provides extra living space – perfect for social gatherings and for the family to bask in that glorious sunshine.
The warm timber and polished concrete used throughout the house are brightened with splashes of sunny yellow and the odd pop of green.
Oversize sliding panels of recycled Tasmanian oak roll away from the dining and living rooms to reveal a music room.
Breath Architecture designed the spaces to allow for the flexibility of modern open-plan living, folding and unfolding according to use. Unused spaces can be shut down to provide cosy nooks, enfolding its inhabitants.
Breath Architecture designed the spaces to allow for the flexibility of modern open-plan living, folding and unfolding according to use. Unused spaces can be shut down to provide cosy nooks, enfolding its inhabitants.
The children love their playful new house, making cubby houses in nooks under the stairs and behind sliding doors, and delivering secret messages through internal windows and trap doors.
Waxed recycled floorboards wrap up the walls in the bedrooms to provide seamless bedheads. Grey combines beautifully with yellow, linking this bedroom with the colour scheme used in the rest of the house.
This cool kids’ bedroom features its occupant’s favourite hue – charcoal.
Green takes centrestage in this bedroom. White on the walls provides contrast, while the natural timber softens the feature wall’s impact.
The bathroom is as interesting as the rest of the house, with a floating vanity providing a sense of space and the mirror echoing the pattern in the splashback tiles.
The bathroom floor tiles tie in with the home’s wider colour palette, and add a creative edge. The home makes the most of its footprint with innovative storage options and by inviting in as much natural light as possible.
The scattered effect of the bathroom floor tiles is replicated on the kitchen splashback to dramatic effect. The natural timber prevents the kitchen from making too bold a statement, however. It’s humble, with an artistic bent, much like its owners.
From the outside, the home takes the form of a simple two-storey dwelling, its symmetrical door and window openings recalling the Georgian design elements of the bluestone cottage. Similarly, the ventilated timber ‘block’ facade cladding borrows both proportion and scale from the past.
The Breath Architecture team made sure the siting, massing, openings in the facade and dimensions of its cladding paid homage to its historic neighbour. The design needed to borrow from its surroundings to reinterpret and contribute to the ongoing narrative of the streetscape.