Keeping up street-side appearances, an Australian artist’s home branches out with a modern extension. Her husband and she purchased a tumbledown turn-of-the-20th-century Edwardian, and asked Nest Architects to plan a remediation that would retain as much of the home’s original appeal as possible. The architects overhauled the rear of the residence with an open addition that extends the once-cramped kitchen.
After getting to know their new home, Kate and Tom, a video game executive, decided they wanted a modern extension that would complement the period architecture and its detailed fireplaces, timber floors, and ornate ceilings. Inside, this crossover of old and new is most overtly expressed where the original floorboards abut a new polished concrete slab. The extension incorporated a fourth bedroom, a new bathroom and laundry, and a modern kitchen, dining, and living area that sits on the concrete floor. In the extension, cabinetry partitions divide the space, giving the family a “sense of not being on top of each other,” and allowing them to use different areas for distinct functions.
The finished home—the renovation and its new outbuilding—is not fussy or delicate. It radiates creativity both in its design and in the way it’s inhabited. The palette of materials, the flow and proportions of spaces, and the dialogue between the formal Edwardian interior and the oblique lines of the extension together form a space that suits the many needs of its four residents.