A heritage home transformed with a modern extension, catering for family living.

Our Queens Park home was a highly intricate and logistical project in being located on a prominant main road, coupled with the existing home being a ‘contributory’ item in a heritage conservation area, which local council required to be maintained. The client’s brief being somewhat at odds with the quality of an old Queen Anne house which demanded for a modern home or solution, full of light and air catering for a family of five.

The design involved maintaining the front façade and front two rooms of the heritage home and radically new extension at the rear. As the block is somewhat narrow the new building resulted in a light filled glass roofed atrium between the new and the old, facilitating all the vertical circulation between the three storeys.

Extensive use of structural off-form concrete walls and beams as well as large expanses of custom blackbutt window joinery connect the new extension to the light filled outdoors. Large cantilevered clad eaves float over roof gardens on the first floor which also enhance the connection between an urban building and its naturally created outdoor environment.

Innovative and minimal steel structural design was implemented to remove the existing slate roof and rebuild it one meter higher allowing the master bedroom space in an otherwise underutilised attic space. Automated skylight windows, louvres and extensive use of glass roofs provide for natural use of light and ventilation into these residual spaces now made habitable. The home also incorporates an underground basement, with clear thickened glass for viewing into the adjoining pool.