Albert Park House

Albert Park House is a moody, dramatic renovation of a heritage-listed 1900s Victorian terrace in Albert Park, Melbourne. The terrace still held some elegant Victorian detail, but a run of earlier renovations had left it utilitarian and plain, and the brief was to bring back the soul the house had lost.

Before the work, the rear living and kitchen looked out onto a dreary courtyard and a garage that doubled as a studio. Improving that outlook sat at the centre of the design, and it has proven central to the result. The house, studio and garden are brought into one relationship through a few simple moves: decluttering and simplifying a previously fragmented plan, and reframing the views from the interiors towards the courtyard gardens.

The view from the kitchen and living spaces towards the garage is transformed by new windows and a plaster render on the double-storey garage, its proportions recalling the early modernist Villa Noailles at Hyères in France. Protruding steel reveals around the new windows add spatial depth and the impression of a thicker wall, while casting long, shifting shadows across the render that will patina over time. Heavy opaque glass has been swapped for clearer glass fitted with mesh screens, so the interior catches a patterned play of light and shadow from the surrounding trees while softening the detail of neighbouring properties.

Picture windows frame views throughout the house, focused on the lush gardens by landscape designer Kate Seddon, whose reworked planting and refreshed pool let the external spaces feed the experience inside and the reverse. The Victorian shell was kept, with a handful of planning changes: a new ensuite and dressing room, and a clear threshold between the private rooms at the front and the more public spaces at the rear, marked by steel-framed doors. A palette of black and white, chocolate and neutral tones runs from the kitchen through the living area to the main bedrooms. In the bathrooms, layered transparent surfaces such as shower screens and hung mirrors create a trompe l'oeil effect that pulls the greenery outside back in. Completed in 2016 across two levels.

Architect: Hindley & Co (Vittoria Taccone). Landscape design: Kate Seddon Landscape Design. Photography: Shannon McGrath.