How A River Rafting Journey Inspired This Chic Melbourne Home

Glen Iris, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, is just 6 miles from the city center. It features neatly laid-out lots, old-growth trees, and a history that dates back to the mid-19th century. The houses range from Victorian charmers to modern takes on family living, but none is more appealing—or boldly contemporary—than a recently completed, two-level residence by Pandolfini Architects.

When the clients, a couple with three school-age children, approached the firm in 2020, they were living in the house—a century-old California-style bungalow they had bought as a teardown—that came with the ¼-acre property. While they envisioned a distinctly 21st-century replacement, they were also looking for an enduring quality that would stand the test of time. “They showed us reference images of ruins,” director Dominic Pandolfini reports, “old structures that had been around for hundreds of years but were still standing, which really struck a chord with us.” Just as intriguingly, the clients mentioned a recent rafting vacation, where they had enjoyed discovering fresh vistas around each bend in the river. They hoped to evoke the feel of an unfolding journey in their new home—another idea that resonated with Pandolfini, who set out to give their vision concrete form.

A Melbourne Home By Pandolfini Architects + Lisa Bruxton Interiors

The resulting 6,500-square-foot house comprises three pavilions aligned along a block-through axis, with the front and rear street elevations facing west and east, respectively. The first volume, a two-story structure flanked by a single-car garage, contains the entry hall and the private quarters: a family room and four bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom. The facade is unlike anything else on the block, a striking composition of simple geometric forms defined but softened by a distinctive yet restrained materials palette: raw concrete, terra-cotta brick, and patinated copper. “We wanted it to look like a modern building,” Pandolfini notes, “but we also wanted it to sit relatively comfortably in the street.” Hence the use of terra-cotta, which tiles many Glen Iris roofs but here clads the upper story—with a twist: The vertically stacked bricks are laid at a 45-degree angle, creating light-catching striations that animate the surface. Inspired by the neighborhood’s ubiquitous garden fences, the ground floor is wrapped in a screen of copper pipes with a verdigris finish. “Eventually the metal would go green on its own,” the architect acknowledges, “but that could take decades, so we helped it along.”

The rear pavilion, a low-slung concrete-block structure with an asymmetrical corrugated-metal roofline, houses a large garage with a vehicle lift where the husband works on a collection of classic automobiles. Sandwiched between it and the bedroom pavilion is a gabled, barnlike volume reaching some 16 feet at its peak. This contains the public spaces—living and dining areas, separated by a monumental freestanding fireplace, and adjacent kitchen—which open onto a covered terrace and swimming pool via a wall of sliding glass doors. Entirely lined with spotted-gum slats, the ceiling is supported by enormous concrete arches that have been sandblasted to achieve the dimple-textured look of bush hammering, a treatment applied to the material throughout.

Clean, Bold Lines Make Up This Melbourne Home

On residential projects, Pandolfini typically handles the interior design too, but in this case collaborated with Lisa Buxton, director of her eponymous studio, who influenced forms and materiality as well as selected finishes and furnishings. “Lisa really pushed us toward a richness we probably wouldn’t have managed alone,” the architect says of the first-time partnership, which has led to several more.

“The architecture had clean, bold lines,” Buxton observes, “so we focused on adding warmth and comfort. I leaned into stone, wood, and metal—authentic materials that not only look beautiful but also stand the test of time.” She was careful to mix textures, balancing smooth, sleek finishes against rougher, more tactile surfaces or juxtaposing crisply detailed masonry and millwork against soft, yielding furnishings and fabrics. Honey-toned oak, used for cabinetry throughout and as slats that cover several walls, also appears as flooring in the bedroom pavilion, while travertine tiles lie underfoot in the barn, which is anchored by the fireplace—a molded, monolithic form that, like many of the walls, is coated with polished plaster.

Evoking A Sense Of Discovery

Furnishings are by a mix of mid-century masters, contemporary innovators, and local artisans. In the living area, Francesco Binfaré’s striking yet sinfully comfortable Standard sofa is joined by a pair of GamFratesi’s Epic cocktail tables in rust-red steel—sculptural forms inspired by Greek columns that evoke the classical world. The breakfast nook’s built-in semicircular banquette, faced in travertine and upholstered in burgundy leather, is overhung by Meaghan and Roberto Rodriguez’s O’cluster pendant fixture, a grouping of ostrich eggs that shares an archaic aura with Simone Bodmer-Turner’s cast-stoneware vessel on the custom John Bastiras table below.

And the sense of discovery that the clients had hoped for? Like a grandly scaled version of the traditional shotgun cottages found in the American South, a corridor runs straight as an arrow from the front door to the rear garage (even though “it’s bad feng shui to be able to see all the way in,” Pandolfini wryly notes). But a 7-foot drop in grade means the pathway steps down from one pavilion to the next, transitions further emphasized by pocket doors set in low portals that act almost like compression lockers between the spaces—the architectural equivalent of bends in a river through which the residence reveals itself in subtle stages.

Peek Inside This Melbourne Home

PANDOLFINI ARCHITECTS: PHILIP VASILEVSKI. LISA BUXTON INTERIORS: SARA GRABALOSA. MUD OFFICE: LANDSCAPE CON­SUL­TANT. MEYER CONSULTING: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. DOME BUILDING PROJECTS: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

FROM FRONT GRAZIA & CO: STOOLS (KITCHEN). VOLA: SINK FITTINGS. REDUXR: PENDANT FIXTURES (KITCHEN, NOOK, DINING AREA). STRUC: CUSTOM DOOR (ENTRY). IN GOOD COMPANY: CUSTOM ROUND TABLE (NOOK). SIMONE BODMER-TURNER: STONEWARE VES­SEL. EDRA: SOFA (LIVING AREA). DELCOURT COLLEC­TION: SIDE TABLE. GUBI: FLOOR LAMP, COCKTAIL TABLES. CADRYS: RUG. BISAZZA: POOL TILE (POOL). HÖRMANN: SLIDING DOORS (GARAGE). RÖTHLISBERGER KOLLEKTION: CHAIRS (DINING AREA). TILES OF EZRA: FIREPLACE TILE. RH: TABLE, CHAIRS (TERRACE). GREAT DANE: DRESSER (BEDROOM). KELLY WEARSTLER: LAMP. APAISER: TUB (BATHROOM). DURAVIT: SINKS. BRODWARE: TUB FILLER, SINK FITTINGS. TIGMI TRADING: VANITY HARDWARE. THROUHOUT WOODCUT: ENGINEERED OAK FLOORING. ARCHITECTURAL HANDMADE BRICKS AND PAVERS: BRICKS, PAVERS. SIGNORINO: TRAVERTINE TILE, MARBLE COUNTERTOPS. PAINT: DULUX.

This Sydney Home Offers An Innovative Solution To The Local Climate

Living in Sydney means waking most mornings to a harbor city bathed in brilliant sunshine under cloudless blue skies. As glorious as the daylight is, it can also be intense and unrelenting—a natural phenomenon to be savored and managed, both a gift and a challenge. A recent project by New Zealand architects Fearon Hay—a 10,800-square-foot, three-level residence on Sydney Harbour’s Rose Bay—balances these needs with virtuosic ease, celebrating the outdoor lifestyle while offering sheltered relief from harsher environmental realities.

“The brief was to replace an existing house on a sloped site crowded by neighbors,” says firm director Jeff Fearon, who along with codirector Tim Hay, led the project. “We retained a lot of established trees and heavy vegetation, especially around the perimeter, so that the new house sits in a mature garden.” That effort provides privacy from adjoining properties while creating a lushly planted, gently descending pathway from the street to the dwelling, which nestles discreetly amidst the greenery as if it has always been there.

Comprising two stories above an expansive basement, the substantial post-tensioned concrete and steel-beam structure pairs a reassuring sense of solidity with a disarming feeling of lightness. This effect is largely due to a series of rain screens that sheathe three sides of the house. “Early on, we thought about how to make the skin robust but with a delicacy to it,” Hay explains. A solution suggested itself on-site when a sample of stone cladding, held up to the tree-dappled light, turned translucent, giving the material a subtle, layered, yet dynamic quality the architects knew they could use. Hence the gridded screens, thin panels of onyx mounted in frames of blackened stainless steel, that cover the back and sides of the building, transforming the fiercest sunlight into a warm, soft glow illuminating the interior.

The clients, a couple in the hospitality industry with adolescent children, needed a flexible residence that functioned as an intimate family home but could also accommodate large, diverse gatherings of 100 people or more. “The process of understanding the extent of those variations of occupation were quite critical in the planning,” Hay acknowledges. On the ground floor, where most of the living and entertaining takes place, Fearon Hay eschewed a completely open plan. But rather than defining the main spaces—formal sitting and dining rooms plus a media lounge and a social kitchen—as individual cells with doorways, the architects used materials, glazing, and other contained elements to demarcate specific areas.

A large, sequestered courtyard bifurcates the east-facing rear of the house, bringing light and greenery into the center of the plan. “Getting morning sunbeams in the kitchen was critical,” Fearon notes. Balancing the garden side’s sense of serene remove, a broad open terrace runs the full length of the west facade, providing outdoor living space along with a gobsmacking panorama of the city and harbor. Newly excavated in the sandstone bedrock, the basement contains a guest apartment, wine room, gym, utility spaces, and garage, while four bedrooms and an office occupy the top floor. A spiral staircase and an elevator connect the three levels.

Light animates the onyx panels that shield the house, but another type of stone—Ceppo di Gré, a bluish-gray sedimentary rock with a terrazzolike pattern—paves the courtyard, terrace, and most of the ground floor, instilling a mood of monumental calm while further connecting indoors and out. Designer Penny Hay, whose eponymous studio oversaw the interiors (her second project with the clients), used the same stone to clad the kitchen island and several architecturally scaled elements throughout the house. “In choosing materials,” she says, “we really consider how they make people feel special and inspired, how they help navigate the spaces, and how they elevate the day-to-day experience of living in the home.”

To counter the hardness of the glass, steel, and stone, she introduced a number of softer, more tactile elements, including velvet-upholstered sofas and daybeds in the sitting room; a curvy velvet-covered banquette in the breakfast area; and a set of plush chairs on the dining terrace. Not to mention the custom grand piano, a sculptural form in striking honey-colored oak that, unexpectedly, sits next to the kitchen island. “It took a lot of back and forth with the suppliers to get the wood right,” reports Hay, who is Tim Hay’s sister. “It certainly wasn’t a piece meant to be locked away in a room somewhere.”

Stained oak-plank flooring replaces stone to help define three ground-level spaces—the sitting, dining, and media rooms—complemented by plaster ceilings that are darker than those in the surrounding areas, producing a subtle change in mood. There are theatrical touches, too, such as a gleaming polished-bronze light sculpture by Niamh Barry above the custom dining table, a slab of Blue Roma marble with distinctive veining that echoes the mottled onyx panels shading the fully glazed side wall. A similar wall fronts one end of the high-ceilinged powder room, which is outfitted with a massive Ceppo sink and a free-form bronze-framed mirror. “The space has a beautiful quality, even though it has no view,” Fearon notes. “While you don’t see the street and trees outside, the diffused light creates a sense of movement behind the onyx, giving a kind of layering and depth to the interior.” Which sums up the project’s multifaceted program nicely.

Walk Through This Modern Home in Sydney Designed by Fearon Hay

PROJECT TEAM

PIERS KAY; VANESSA MORRISON; GORDON GALLAGHER: FEARON HAY. VANESSA McNAUGHT: PENNY HAY. STUDIO CD: ART CONSULTANT. PAUL BANGAY: LANDSCAPE CONSULTANT. ELECTROLIGHT: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. ARCADIS; VAN DER MEER; WSP: STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS. BUILDCOM AUSTRALIA: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

PRODUCT SOURCES

FROM FRONT MOLTENI&C: SOFAS (SITTING ROOM). MINOTTI: DAYBEDS. ROOMS STUDIO: TRIPLE BENCH (ENTRY GALLERY). STAUER: CUSTOM PIANO. BOFFI: CABINETRY (KITCHEN). PAOLA LENTI: DINING TABLE, CHAIRS (TERRACE). FLEXFORM: SOFAS (TERRACE, MEDIA LOUNGE). MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES: FLOOR LAMP (MEDIA LOUNGE). NIAMH BARRY: PENDANT FIXTURE (DINING ROOM). GIORGETTI: CHAIRS. WITTMANN: BANQUETTE (BREAKFAST AREA). POLTRONA FRAU: CHAIRS. HENRY WILSON: TABLE LAMP. LINEN SOCIETY: BEDDING (BEDROOM). THROUGH CARPENTERS WORKSHOP GALLERY: MIRROR (POWDER ROOM). THROUGHOUT FABINOX: CUSTOM FACADE SCREENS. EURO NATURAL STONE: ONYX. ECO OUTDOOR: CEPPO DI GRÉ STONE.

Studio Bright Transforms a Historic Melbourne Property into a Cozy Family Home

It can be challenging to make a true family home in an urban environment. That was the brief for Studio Bright, which created a refuge for a couple with two young girls in a dense and gritty part of Melbourne. The clients had acquired a small Victorian terrace house that a previous resident, architect Mick Jörgensen, had modified in the 1980s by adding an extension; as a result, the interior detailing, from ornate cornices to modernist wood beams, spanned the centuries. Led by director Melissa Bright, the studio transformed the structure by adding two new wings—one with a roof deck—that better support the homeowners’ lifestyle.

Outdated service buildings on the site, including a shed and a garage, were removed to make way for the additions and an interstitial courtyard. The larger of the two extensions is a wedge-shape two-story volume of painted brickwork, its upper level wrapped in brown-painted metal mesh; accessible through a new entrance, the wing’s ground floor houses the kitchen and dining area and the primary living area/lounge. One flight up is the primary suite with a roof deck that boasts views of a tall elm. The second new volume, on the opposite side of the main courtyard, contains a home office and a bike room.

The original Victorian building became a family zone—complete with bedrooms for the girls and their own hangout space—that can be closed off via large sliding doors. “The configuration makes for connected family living but supports separation,” Bright explains.

The architect made careful decisions in how she joined the Victorian, the previous addition, and the new spaces. This feat was done with a steady hand that made sweeping structural changes to the layout in the existing portion. For example, the circulation route in the original building was moved from the south side to the north in order to give the girls’ bedrooms sunlight and views of the courtyard. The Jörgensen beams were removed but only partially, allowing for higher ceilings while also nodding to the home’s history. “We thought it was nicer to let all of these layers come through,” Bright explains. “Three eras sit together as a cohesive whole.” In this way, memory of the home’s past becomes a part of its present day.

grazia and co.: custom swivel chairs, custom daybed, custom coffee table (lounge)

instyle: leather upholstery

warwick: daybed fabric

l a a l: wall lights

truss forte: steel mesh (exterior)

dulux: steel mesh paint

nood co.: sink (kids’ bathroom)

cabinet smith: custom cabinetry

academy tiles: tiles

zuster furniture: sideboard (kids’ living space)

snelling studio: table, stools

jardan: sofa

muuto through living edge: chairs (kitchen)

inax through artedomus: tiles (primary bathroom)

lindsey wherrett ceramics: custom ceramic basin

duralloy: custom shower screen powder coating

australian sustainable hardwoods: wall panels, joinery

artefact industries: ceiling lights

brodware through e&s: sink fittings

artemide through stylecraft: wall lights (bathrooms)

eckersley garden architecture: landscape architect

meyer consulting: structural engineer

provanbuilt: builder