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Bob’s Bungalow by Blair Smith Architecture is a reimagined California bungalow in Melbourne’s northwest suburbs that radiates warmth — and not just because of the expansive windows that fill the living areas with sunshine.
Semi-retired couple, Mark and Jacinta, engaged Blair Smith for the recent redesign after living in the home since 1980! While the front of the bungalow featured an endearing period facade and a beautifully established garden, the house had been mostly unaltered since it was built in the 1930s, and the lean-to at the rear was now ‘on its last legs’.
In addition to refurbishing areas of the existing home, the brief was to create a relatively simple, single-level addition that the clients could build themselves (aided by Mark’s experience in the construction industry) containing a kitchen, lounge, dining, laundry and a nook for their record player.
‘Within that simple diagram, the clients were trusting enough to allow me to have some fun with the internal detailing,’ Blair says. With the couple tackling the renovation as owner-builders, it was always going to be a personal project, and most design meetings took place over home-cooked meals, featuring produce from their garden.
‘[The design] was influenced by an ongoing and evolving conversation with Mark and Jacinta about life; their experiences, interests, the garden; and decades already lived in the house,’ Blair says.
Part of the initial plan was to create separate dining, living and kitchen zones divided by walls and full height joinery, but this quickly felt too restrictive within the addition’s 66-square-metre small footprint.
Instead, they decided to define the spaces in other ways, using level changes and timber planters to create a sunken lounge, as a partially suspended terrazzo bench boarders the kitchen. Blackbutt joinery by Mood Workshop and the terracotta tiled floors underfoot also bring inviting textural variations and earthy tones to interiors.
‘The clients embraced decision making with a sense of joy and experimentation. Choices weren’t based on trend or precedent, rather their isolated emotional response to what we proposed. There was a “yes, and…” response to most ideas and materials put forward,’ Blair says.
This collaboration lead to some of the home’s more unique features, including the green steel windows that tie in with the verdant colours of the backyard.
The windows along the rear also feature what Blair calls an operable ‘dynamic eve’, with louvres that can be opened or closed to maximise solar heat gain in winter, and offer shade in summer — improving energy efficiency. On the skillion ceiling, a material called EchoPanel (made from mostly post-consumer recycled PET plastic bottles) runs between each laminated timber beam.
‘Beyond it being an unexpected way to finish a residential ceiling, it offers amazing acoustic qualities in a space with high ceilings and lots of glass. This was an important consideration as Mark and Jacinta love to play records within this space,’ Blair says.
The couple were actively involved in every decision, and remained living in the home during the three-year-build, working bit-by-bit, at their own pace. ‘Because the process was longer, it felt as if choices and design moves were able to unfold and inform one another more naturally,’ Blair adds.
He says the home now feels completely authentic and unpretentious, with quirks and handmade details that make it a perfect reflection of the owners themselves.
