Adding a top and lower ground floor created room for everyone to spread out. Ease of entertaining was key for the owners, so maximising the home’s formal rooms, designing a kitchen for large-scale cooking and creating outdoor spaces to gather are much-loved additions.

Luxury new home. Guest bathroom is an eye catcher boasting floating cabinetry and shadow lines at the wall and ceiling junction

Brunswick Parlour transforms a Victorian cottage into a hard-working, personalised home for a family of four. Our clients loved the character of their Brunswick terrace home, but not its inefficient floor plan and poor year-round thermal control. They didn't need more space, they just needed their space to work harder. The front bedrooms remain largely untouched, retaining their Victorian features and only introducing new cabinetry. Meanwhile, the main bedroom’s previously pokey en suite and wardrobe have been expanded, adorned with custom cabinetry and illuminated via a generous skylight. At the rear of the house, we reimagined the floor plan to establish shared spaces suited to the family’s lifestyle. Flanked by the dining and living rooms, the kitchen has been reoriented into a more efficient layout and features custom cabinetry that uses every available inch. In the dining room, the Swiss Army Knife of utility cabinets unfolds to reveal a laundry, more custom cabinetry, and a craft station with a retractable desk. Beautiful materiality throughout infuses the home with warmth and personality, featuring Blackbutt timber flooring and cabinetry, and selective pops of green and pink tones. The house now works hard in a thermal sense too. Insulation and glazing were updated to best practice standard, and we’ve introduced several temperature control tools. Hydronic heating installed throughout the house is complemented by an evaporative cooling system and operable skylight. The result is a lush, tactile home that increases the effectiveness of every existing inch to enhance daily life for our clients, proving that good design doesn’t need to add space to add value.

Behind the rolling hills of Arthurs Seat sits “The Farm”, a coastal getaway and future permanent residence for our clients. The modest three bedroom brick home will be renovated and a substantial extension added. The footprint of the extension re-aligns to face the beautiful landscape of the western valley and dam. The new living and dining rooms open onto an entertaining terrace. The distinct roof form of valleys and ridges relate in level to the existing roof for continuation of scale. The new roof cantilevers beyond the extension walls creating emphasis and direction towards the natural views.

Warm earthy tones, organic mixed coloured Fibonacci stone benchtop and beige mosaic splashback tile from Academy tiles compliment the feature timber surrounds of this family kitchen.

Periscope House draws light into a young family’s home, adding thoughtful solutions and flexible spaces to 1950s Art Deco foundations. Our clients engaged us to undertake a considered extension to their character-rich home in Malvern East. They wanted to celebrate their home’s history while adapting it to the needs of their family, and future-proofing it for decades to come. The extension’s form meets with and continues the existing roofline, politely emerging at the rear of the house. The tones of the original white render and red brick are reflected in the extension, informing its white Colorbond exterior and selective pops of red throughout. Inside, the original home’s layout has been reimagined to better suit a growing family. Once closed-in formal dining and lounge rooms were converted into children’s bedrooms, supplementing the main bedroom and a versatile fourth room. Grouping these rooms together has created a subtle definition of zones: private spaces are nestled to the front, while the rear extension opens up to shared living areas. A tailored response to the site, the extension’s ground floor addresses the western back garden, and first floor (AKA the periscope) faces the northern sun. Sitting above the open plan living areas, the periscope is a mezzanine that nimbly sidesteps the harsh afternoon light synonymous with a western facing back yard. It features a solid wall to the west and a glass wall to the north, emulating the rotation of a periscope to draw gentle light into the extension. Beneath the mezzanine, the kitchen, dining, living and outdoor spaces effortlessly overlap. Also accessible via an informal back door for friends and family, this generous communal area provides our clients with the functionality, spatial cohesion and connection to the outdoors they were missing. Melding modern and heritage elements, Periscope House honours the history of our clients’ home while creating light-filled shared spaces – all through a periscopic lens that opens the home to the garden.

House designed remotely for our client in Hong Kong moving back to Australia. Job designed using Pytha and all correspondence was Zoom and email, job all Designed & managed by The Renovation Broker ready for client to move in when they flew in from Hong Kong.

This casual living room of KIllara House by Nathan Gornall Design offers a more relaxed alternative to the formal areas of the home. This open plan room enjoys painstakingly restored details with a blend of contemporary as well as classical inspired furniture and art pieces. A large custom joinery piece in timber and brass houses all the home owners' tech when not in use.

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