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A common architectural response to renovating a Federation home in Melbourne is to knock off the back, and add an oversized two-storey box jutting directly into the backyard.
Erindale, designed by Austin Maynard Architects, takes a different approach that deeply considers the client’s needs, and the value of their existing backyard.
‘The garden was just as important to the client as the house,’ says Andrew Maynard, director of Austin Maynard Architects. ‘And so the challenge was, how do we give them all the space they need and celebrate the garden?’
Their answer was to retain the semi-detached home’s single-storey form, while adding a curving extension at the rear that reaches out to, but doesn’t overpower, the backyard.
The curving wall is an architectural focal point, as well as a practical move to maximise the home’s northern orientation.
A white steel overhang — propped on hairpin columns for a visual lightness akin to the silver birch trees beyond — meanwhile provides shade from the summer sun.
This extension doesn’t just offer 150 square metres of additional living space, but a much larger, holistically designed area inclusive of the backyard for indoor-outdoor living.
Rooms within the addition feel like an extension of the garden and vice versa, each featuring reclaimed brick flooring and borrowing elements from one another to ultimately form a better home.
‘I’d argue the dining room is massive because the entire space feels like an outdoor pavilion: a beautiful greenhouse in the middle of a garden,’ says Andrew.
‘Any bigger and you’d lose that beautiful intimacy with the garden.’
The challenge in the original portion of the house was likewise to use space more wisely. Rather than squeezing a bath into the main bathroom, a narrow service side path has been slightly extended to incorporate an outdoor bathing option.
‘The owner embraced it,’ says Andrew. ‘Once the screen greenery grows, it will become a garden room without a roof.’
Bedrooms and a rarely used front living room were reconfigured, making way for a more generous main bedroom with an en suite, another bedroom for the client’s son, plus a laundry, study, and multipurpose room that’s visually connected to the new living area.
All these updates, yet the house appears unchanged from the street — a deliberate move to maintain the neighbourhood character of the tree-lined avenue in tightly held Ripponlea.
In fact, the home’s period character has been enhanced by a new terracotta roof that matches its identical Federation neighbour.
‘Where often, over time, twinned homes like these become progressively unrelated, here they present a correlative charm,’ says Andrew.
‘When the owners are in their kitchen, looking out, they’re also looking back at a roof that is a mirror image of their own. Neither has ruined their view, and I really like that.’
In another’s hands, it could have been another story entirely — an outcome Andrew asks all homeowners, designers, and builders to consider in future residential projects.
‘Think about the ubiquitous two-storey box smashed onto the back and compare that to what has been achieved here — the perfect scale, the fresh air, the all-encompassing views of the garden and the light, that complete diurnal range from sunrise to sunset,’ he says.
‘You have to wonder ‘why add a box?’
An edited version of this story originally appeared in The Design Files Magazine Issue 03. Subscribe to the biannual print magazine here.
