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Category Archives: Homes
Architect’s Tour: Toorak Residence In Melbourne
Approached with experience and discernment, Toorak Residence is an architectural dwelling with a considered interiority. Designed by Architecton, the luxury home embraces its context, enabling seamless transitions between indoor and outdoor space.
Video Timeline: 00:00 – The Local Project Print Publication 00:15 – Introduction to Architectural Toorak Residence 01:02 – The Levels and Layers of the Home 01:46 – Blurring the Lines Between Living and Landscape 02:30 – The Material Palette of the Architectural Home 03:15 – A Sculptural Champagne Cork 03:28 – Lighting Considerations 04:08 – A Range of Versatile Living Areas 04:44 – Ageing Like a Fine Champagne 05:13 – Subscribe to The Local Project Print Publication
Located in the affluent suburb of Toorak in close proximity to the Melbourne CBD, Toorak Residence is strong element in the impressive architectural environment. Marked externally by a bold sculpture, the home sits at over 1000 square metres and features three spacious levels. Arriving at Toorak Residence, the process of entry is elongated by carefully layered experiential details. Beyond the front gate lies an informal garden space – a tactile composition of pleasant greenery – which effortlessly navigates residents towards the main entrance. Stepping inside the architectural home, the material palette is intentionally restrained. Architecton champions concrete, natural stone, timber and glass as the ideal canvases for light and bases for architectural detail. Flowing out towards the landscape whilst internally welcoming sunlight, Toorak Residence does justice to the rigour of Artchitecton. A house tour reveals the architectural residence to be a peaceful dwelling, encouraging intuitive patterns of movement for superior living.
Architect’s Tour: Casa Mia In City Beach, Australia
Offering a playful rendition of the familiar sustainable narrative, Casa Mia enables residents to experience life inside a dream house. Crafted by Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects in collaboration with Caroline Di Costa Architect, the residence uses brickwork to convey a liberating message.
Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to Casa Mia 00:28 – High-Density Living 01:11 – A Playful Space 01:53 – Providing a Presence and Privacy 02:13 – Sustainable Brickwork 03:08 – Love and Appreciation for Brickworks 03:39 – Historic and Ancient Japanese Architecture 04:25 – Utilising Unfinished Materials 05:00 – Sustainable Design 05:47 – The Architect’s Favourite Aspects of the House
Located on the Ocean Mia Estate in City Beach, Casa Mia is an architect’s own home, sitting in contrast to the built context. Constructed from carefully positioned brickwork with spaces between bricks at its edge, the dream house juxtaposes the rectilinear forms of the surrounding buildings, presenting a dynamic profile of surprising lightness.
Liaising with Brickworks, Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects both inheres the project with a sense of sustainability and makes the concept legible as a prominent feature of the architect’s own home. Brickworks enables its products to be applied to the dream house in their uncut state – an atypical usage – in order to minimise waste. Every brick of the dream house is locally sourced and exhibits colours reminiscent of the earthy natural landscape. Inspired by Japanese architecture, Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects employs fully-glazed bricks around particular openings.
The bricks bounce sunlight into the depths of the home, allowing the residents to save energy where possible. Although Casa Mia represents the weight of responsibility architects have towards the environment, it also presents this responsibility as beneficial. Iredale Pederson Hook Architects and Caroline Di Costa Architect craft a dream house that rejoices in its sustainability, utilising the colour and texture of brick to suggest a playful variation of an architect’s own home.
Design Tour: Crown Jewel Penthouse In Canberra
Named in relation to its amazing city views, Crown Jewel is a luxury penthouse capturing some of Canberra’s most striking vistas. Inside a penthouse crafted by Parallel Workshop Architects, residents are immediately met with a strong sense of natural connection.
Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to the Penthouse 00:30 – Creating the Clients Dream Home 01:01 – Incorporation of the Natural Landscape 01:15 – Catering for Different Occasions 01:44 – Referencing the Structural Architecture 02:05 – Creating a Kingdom from the Penthouse 03:10 – The Design Strategy 03:29 – Favourable Aspects of the Penthouse 03:52 – The Freedom of Design
Situated on the southern shore of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra, Crown Jewel is one of six penthouses in the lavish Sapphire development. From inside a penthouse, occupants can enjoy amazing city views including those of Lake Burley Griffin, Kingston Harbour and the lush wetlands. A tranquil experience inside a penthouse often begins with the occupant feeling settled in place.
Parallel Workshop Architects connects residents to the character of Canberra by reflecting elements of the natural landscape in the architecture and interior design of the home. While joining the apartment to its natural context, Parallel Workshop Architects pays homage to the clients’ request for luxury inside a penthouse. The deep, rich colours of the Australian landscape are featured in the immersive architecture and interior design, including the navy furnishings, muted green finishes and consistent interplays of light and dark grey.
Translating both the surrounds and design brief into a cohesive architectural outcome, Parallel Workshop Architects establishes a family life in place. Functional and aesthetically generous, Crown Jewel is equipped to provide for multiple generations, fostering an authentic love for living inside a penthouse in Canberra.
Greek Architecture: ‘O Lofos’ Residence On Crete
O Lofos*: The green, wild Cretan landscape and the richness and heritage of traditional crafts define this new, thoroughly contemporary residential design by Block722. Sat on the northern foothills of Thrypti mountain within the Greek island’s eastern side, the project is a commission by a private client.
It called for a 280 sq m home on a slope, including two guestrooms and generous outdoors areas. Balancing the needs of the brief with the natural setting that combines vistas of mountains, plains, and the Mediterranean Sea, was critical in the architects’ design solution. The architecture was driven by desire to create a modern house that is discreet and respectful to its surroundings.
Negotiating the site’s angle through levels instead of steps was also critical in moulding a relaxing environment that embraces its setting.
A path down a slope from the main road leads visitors to the residence’s entrance. The complex’s size is cleverly broken down into smaller volumes, which are interconnected through circulation routes and in-between spaces – some indoors and some open-air. The main home is divided into two low buildings linked by a semi-enclosed area with a water feature.
The design merges natural materials that are often used in the local vernacular, such as wood and stone. At the same time, the atmosphere is distinctly contemporary, blending Block722’s inherent Scandinavian sensibility and organic minimalism with Japanese architecture influences. This nod to Japan unfolds through the design’s refreshing simplicity of clean, almost austere lines that balance the materials’ natural, tactile nature and the overall craft-rich approach. The powerful Greek sunlight helps define shapes and surfaces,
Australian Architecture: ‘Fitzroy Bridge House’
A modern house, Fitzroy Bridge House is a work of collaboration led by Matt Gibson Architecture + Design. Featuring a glass bridge – from which the project receives its name – the home emerges as a considered and personal dwelling that celebrates its older architectural elements.
Video timeline: 00:00 – The Local Project’s Print Publication 00:20 – The Name Behind Fitzroy Bridge House 00:57 – South Fitzroy Heritage Precinct 01:36 – Moving Through the Home 01:53 – Dissolution of Interior and Exterior 02:16 – The Bridge 02:40 – The Rear Retreat 03:14 – Involvement of the Clients and Their Non-Negotiables 03:57 – Key Sustainable Moves 04:51 – The Cellar
Located in the southern Fitzroy heritage precinct, Fitzroy Bridge House sits an enviable two kilometres from the Melbourne CBD. The residence occupies a long, thin site and is comprised of distinct pavilions, encapsulating both the pre-existing architecture and the work of the modern house.
As Fitzroy Bridge House is situated in a heritage overlay, the exterior of the home could not be altered in relation to the front two rooms. Entering the home, residents move through the Victorian-style environments before reaching the rear architecture of the modern house that features a refined internal courtyard settled into the dining room interior design.
Connecting two pavilions, the glass bridge forms the focal point of the modern house. The bold feature provides a view down to the manicured garden in the Japanese-inspired courtyard – a fine work of landscape architecture requested by the client and executed by Robyn Barlow. A product of collaboration, Fitzroy Bridge House is closely connected to the client. Warm, inviting and personal, the modern house expresses its own built narrative, enabling the client to retell the story of its creation for years to come.
Australian Architecture: A Tiny Home In Adelaide
A sculptural tiny house enveloped by the garden, Plaster Fun House represents a light-hearted shift from the residential norm. Designed by Sans-Arc Studio, the extension of the tiny house sees the old and new united in a home defined by curves. Located in Torrensville, a western suburb of Adelaide, Plaster Fun House takes inspiration from its cultural surroundings.
Video timeline: 00:00 – The Local Project’s Print Publication 00:14 – Introduction to Plaster Fun House 00:50 – An Interesting Brief 01:15 – Integrating Old and New 01:41 – A Backyard Oasis 02:00 – Curves in all the Right Places 02:28 – Taking Inspiration from Migrant Housing 03:00 – Colour Splashing Throughout 03:50 – A Display of the Clients Personalities 04:32 – Interacting with the Surrounding Environment 05:45 – Subscribe to The Local Project’s Print Publication
Though, a house tour reveals that the primary architectural aspects of the tiny house contrast the immediate built landscape, testifying instead to an art deco style. Sans-Arc Studio introduces curves into the architecture, interior design and particularly the custom joinery of the tiny house.
As well as injecting a playful character into the home, the curves enable effortless movement through the compact space. Responding to the clients’ request for terrazzo to be used wherever possible, Sans-Arc Studio employs terrazzo benchtops. Stepping down into the extension of the home, the terrazzo material of the kitchen island benchtop unites the old and new aspects of the dwelling, a staggering from kitchen bench to dining surface marks the threshold between new and existing.
Across the façade of the tiny house, natural light plays across the stucco wall treatment; a crafted ode to the Mediterranean-inspired housing of the surrounds. The resulting home is peaceful, artistic and unique, providing the clients with a new and inviting extension.
Architectural Design: ‘Yacht House’ By ARNO MATIS ARCHITECTURE (2022)
This concrete waterfront residence explores the lines between landscape and architecture; blurring nature and building. In a postmodern world of dislocation, the use of landscape and topography as form-generator is a particularly cogent means to establish a sense of “poetic belonging”.
This rocky, steeply sloping waterfront site was an ideal source of inspiration to create a residence which explores this dialectical tension. The residence is massed in two forms that cascade to the waterfront.
The spaces between the forms, expressed as slip-planes, undulate like the rock formations on the Burrard Inlet shoreline. The juxtaposition of forms are loose and geometries are non-orthogonal and sympathetic to the site contours.
Design: Hidden Garden House, Sydney, Australia
Imbued with a sense of tranquillity, Hidden Garden House is a minimalist residence with a restrained materiality. Designed by TRIAS in collaboration with the clients, the home emerges as a peaceful ode to simplicity.
Video timeline: 00:00 – The Local Project’s Print Publication 00:15 – Introduction to Hidden Garden House 00:40 – The Surrounding Neighbourhood 01:01 – A Walkthrough of the House 01:43 – Views from the Upper Level 01:54 – The Hidden Garden 02:13 – The Creative Clients 02:35 – Hand Made House Features from the Client 03:09 – Warmth Through Material Selections 04:17 – Taking Pride in the Project 05:09 – The Architects Favourite Features 05:38 – Subscribe to The Local Project’s Print Publication
Located in the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, Hidden Garden House celebrates small living on the fringe of the CBD. A house tour of the property elucidates its floor plan. Entering the home, the living room leads to an elevated dining room, which in turn flows to the kitchen space. The kitchen wraps around a courtyard garden and upstairs, the bedroom and bathroom are separated by blocks of joinery. As one of the occupants of Hidden Garden House is a ceramicist, their influence is apparent throughout the home. Terracotta floor tiles line the kitchen whilst white tiles in the lightwell bounce sunlight into the home. Brass hardware and elegant furniture also testify to the quality of the client’s work. TRIAS uses natural materials to establish a sense of warmth in Hidden Garden House. Bagged brickwork proposes a feeling of tactility, while timber floors and joinery visually soften the interior. Smaller details such as pendant lights and brass finishes speak endearingly to the idea of careful consideration. Refined and minimal, Hidden Garden House stands as a timeless residence; a ceramicist’s own home. Working closely with the clients and embracing their unique contributions, TRIAS translates a joint vision into an architectural success.
Home Tours: A Scottish Highlands Retreat (Video)
Interior designer Jill Macnair shows us around her home in the Scottish Highlands, a place of retreat that brings her a sense of peace, place and connection to the natural world.
“If there were a window into my soul, I think the view would be a rain-soaked Scottish landscape. Not, I hope, because I have a relentlessly bleak nature. My dad plotted family holidays all over the small but majestic country I grew up in, and while I didn’t greatly appreciate his efforts at the time – the walks were a bit too long, the cycles often too uphill – the colours and scenes etched into my memory from those trips are the ones that still restore me today. They form the palette that now underpins the design of my holiday home on Loch Tay, Perthshire.
Boomers Daily 