A Sympathetic Renovation + Extension Of A Modernist Caulfield Home

The renovation and subsequent extension of this split amount Caulfield house by Kister Architects is a masterclass in balance. 

‘The customers requested something entertaining but modest, colourful with tons of texture, but small with a feeling of sparseness,’ says Ilana Kister of Kister Architects.

They had been also set on paying homage to the home’s 70s roots, by preserving the style of the facade and the interior’s retro vibes, but keen to incorporate a modern aspect. 

The venture started as a solitary web-site, double storey renovation, but morphed into a double web page renovation with a solitary storey addition when the shoppers obtained a next parcel of land on the adjacent block (on the southern facet). The 70s split-amount northern household was retained, although the dwelling on the southern block was demolished to make way for a sympathetic contemporary extension. 

‘The highlight of the project was the limitless alternatives discovered as soon as the web site doubled in sizing,’ states Ilana. 

Stretching the home on to the adjacent southern internet site authorized the architects  to re-think how they ended up likely to deliver gentle into the new areas, and how to include mother nature and landscape into the residence. 

‘Our most important problem was to retain a constant connection to nature and gentle,’ clarifies Ilana. Therefore, the house was designed around courtyard pockets, which frame views to the backyard garden and ‘interesting in-between’ areas. The sprawling garden and expanding abundance of vegetation are noticeable from nearly every place in the household, while sky lights have been strategically positioned to minimise the need to have for artificial lights. 

To hark again to its 70s modernist beginnings, the architects utilised resources this kind of as bronze components, glazing and aluminum, white aggregated concrete with blue plush and white felted carpet along with orange velvet and warm timber veneers. 

‘These are offset with a layered collection of concrete render, glazed Japanese tiles, black veneer and gold wallpaper to blue the retro with a nuanced contemporary palette,’ points out Ilana. 

The combination of these two distinct, but complementary, palettes enable to blur the line in between the similarly distinctive retro and modern day pieces of the property, tying outdated and new collectively. 

‘The structure and advancement of this has brought an old, tired home into a charming contemporary haven, that embeds the family into their landscape,’ states Ilana.