Heritage Elegance: Villa Restoration Meets Contemporary Family Living.

The clients, a young family of four with an elderly mother, had a very clear vision when they purchased the property and their instructions were simple:

1. Restore the heritage villa’s street frontage – reinstating the bay window, front porch, and decorative fretwork to bring it back to its former glory, and
2. Create a modern family home – extending the house to suit their family’s needs, including four double bedrooms, generous living spaces, plenty of storage, and strong connection to the garden and private outdoor space.

The design also needed to accommodate a separate living room/media room, a large family bathroom, guest powder room, utility and scullery and a separate garage, while still meeting the heritage design requirements to the street, and a modern extension to the rear.

Our approach celebrated the contrast between the heritage character and modern architecture, reinstating the original villa façade to the street elevation, carefully, such as budling the front porch, bay window and fretwork, with a stepped rear extension to positioned one metre below the villa floor level, following the natural site contours and softening the transition to the garden.

Entering the villa, you are greeted with the unmistakeable villa charm of the high ceilings and the wide central hallway, walking past the doors leading to the bedrooms, media room and family bathroom your eyes are drawn towards the wide stairs leading you down towards the extension, giving you full view through the kitchen and living room.  A carefully positioned full height window placed at the end of the extension, directly opposite the front door, gives you a glimpse of the back garden with vibrant green hues coming through.

By separating the private from the public, the quiet from the loud, the new home offers an open plan living area, with a large kitchen, scullery, dining and living room leading to a large north-facing deck and north-west facing garden.  The bedrooms and media room can be further separated by closing a cleverly hidden full width cavity sliding door, located at the bottom of the stairs for late night entertaining while the kids are sound asleep.

The extension takes a modern form with a mono-pitched roof and treated timber cladding, installed vertically while the villa has been restored with traditional horizontal timber weatherboards and new exterior timber doors and windows, to create a clear delineation between the villa and the extension.