Garden House

Our Garden House project sits on the land of the Wurundjeri people, who have been the traditional custodians of this area for generations.

The family behind Garden House loved their North Fitzroy garden, and the brief was simple: keep as much of it as possible, and open the house up to it. An earlier plan had pushed too far into the backyard, so the challenge was to give them the space they needed without losing the trees and open lawn they valued most.

The addition behind the Edwardian front is deliberately compact. It takes the smallest footprint it can, and every room looks out onto the garden. Window seats blur the line between inside and out, and large pivot doors and double hung windows make it easy to move between the house and the garden.

As with many of our projects, we took cues from mid-century houses, separating spaces with internal courtyards rather than walls. The courtyards are treated as rooms in their own right, each one used at a different time of day.

The materials are robust and quiet, with a timber-lined ceiling bringing warmth and texture to the plainer walls and floors. The practical side got as much care as the rest: with five bikes, a surfboard and all the usual garden gear, storage was designed in from the start, not left as an afterthought.

The garden itself is by Sam Cox Landscape.