Garden House

Garden House is a layered architectural intervention that delicately extends a historic home and garden in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. The home’s heritage façade has been carefully restored to preserve the patina and character accrued over generations.

The new addition, while bold and sculptural, presents as a quiet companion to the original house. Rather than competing with the past, the architecture descends most of the intervention below ground, creating space without erasing history. This allows the small-scale above-ground structure, made from off-form concrete, hand-made bricks and zinc cladding to remain subtle and unassuming.

Significant engineering was required to protect the existing house during excavation, a delicate act of holding the past in place, while carving out architectural opportunity beneath. The thoughtful excavation process allowed the garden to be fully reinstated above, with lush greenery cascading over the driveway entry, intertwining garden and built form.

At ground level, angled off-form concrete blade walls define the study pavilion, directing views toward the garden. Sculptural skylights punctuate the addition, drawing light into the study and the double-height subterranean core.

The landscape composes a dialogue between the mature Melbourne garden and playful exotic planting. The extensive gardens are home to significant trees including Canary Island date palms and Queensland bottle trees, witnesses to the site’s long history.

Garden House is a study in contrast and continuity — a heritage home respectfully restored, a sculptural addition quietly embedded, and a subterranean world revealed through light, material and craft.