Edithvale, Chelsea and Bonbeach Stations | Cox Architecture
Located on the Frankston train line, the Edithvale, Chelsea and Bonbeach Level Crossing Removal Project reenvisioned the existing rail corridor creating safer crosscorridor connections and providing three new train stations and associated infrastructure to service the bayside community.
The design of the stations celebrates the historic barrier dune that once separated Port Phillip Bay and the expansive Carrum Carrum wetlands. A palette of sandy tones and eroded sloping forms pays homage to the rolling dunes. Each entrance to the stations is marked by either a beacon or canopy, which through collaboration with the Traditional Owners, convey aspects of their rich history and the importance of this place to First Nations people.
The project celebrates the deeper history of the site while improving connections between the suburb and the bay, and enhancing and encouraging the commuter experience.
Ember | MRTN Architects
Two studios with a unified language but serve contrasting purposes, to work and not to work. One exercise and meditation space, that can also be used as a guest room. The other, a work and inspiration space for a writer and art director. There was a clear decision not to build an addition to the existing home, but to keep its original form and create private spaces that physically detached but visually connected. The purpose and inhabitant of each building help to determine its form; that they be separate but with a connecting space between.
Courtyard House | Clare Cousins Architects
Careful to consider its sensitive heritage context, Courtyard House reinterprets the previous condemned 1885 cornerstores scale, materiality, and modest street presence. The building is directly informed by the sites history, the shiplap cladding and galvanised roof establishing a contemporary expression of the past.
Unusually located at the centre of the street frontage, the southern courtyard enables a more dynamic interface between private outdoor space and the public realm.
Courtyard House is shaped from within, dissecting the traditional gable form for a home that is private yet open, contemporary yet figurative, modest but generous.
Dandenong High School Design and Technology Hub | Kerstin Thompson Architects
Dandenong High School Design and Technology Hub is a final piece of the campus puzzle, the project takes an existing redundant aging gym and performing arts centre located against along the edge of the school and adaptively reuses the structural frame into a new twolevel hub for design and technology studies.
The school envisaged the building as a space that would provide the students with a realworld working environment where they could independently investigate the many streams of design and technology in the resolution of their projects. The key to creating these collaborative spaces is the establishment of a spine that links all the teaching spaces encouraging the mixing of ideas and techniques. The pockets created along the spine blur the line between the more formal spaces and the informal ones, where ideas can be developed in small groups in a way more akin to a studio than a classroom.
Dennis House | Olaver Architecture
Dennis House is a courtyard house which is robust for its layers in planning, section, structural resolution and material choices. Every element of Dennis house is considered for its contribution to the whole and there is a richness in the resultant simplicity which is deeper than the sum of its parts. The CLT and recycled brick structure is both cost effective and sustainable, with richness in texture and a calming interior. Dennis House supports family life and fosters a sense of togetherness extending to the gardens and neighborhood beyond. The careful balance of simplicity, sustainability, and functionality sets Dennis House apart as a home that enriches the lives of its inhabitants.
Clifton Hill Primary School | Jackson Clements Burrows Architects
This dynamic vertical campus for grade 5 and 6 students creates exemplary learning, teaching, staff working and multipurpose community environments for a muchloved innercity school. Spanning three levels, the building adopts a simple but rigorous floorplan that accommodates a large program on a constrained site. Located opposite the Darling Gardens, the design response references the existing heritage campus buildings while also drawing inspiration from Eric Carles The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A ribbon band of glazed green bricks and use of circular bite like apertures bring a whimsical quality to the design. Exposed structural elements including mass timber and articulated services enable the building to serve as an explanatory teaching tool for students. Designed utilising a mass timber hybrid construction to achieve Passivhaus Certification, a first for the VSBA, the building integrates a PV array on the playground roof terrace to provide power and a visual learning opportunity.
Cobden Terrace | Matt Gibson Architecture + Design
Cobden Terrace is a heritagesensitive adaptation of an 1868 statelisted terrace house in Fitzroy. The project applies adaptive reuse through minimal but impactful change to meet a host of social, environmental and functional aspects, whilst enabling a joyous, personalityfilled family living environment.
Heritage, sustainability and budget principles have converged with equal influence. Adaptive reuse, through doing less, helps retains the history of the place for its social and cultural imperatives as well as enable a functioning family layout that will sustain.
Externally, a small rigorously detailed yet rationally conceived ground level addition is however provided in sympathy with the existing building. Inside, we sought to celebrate and emphasise the best aspects of the Victorian home. The result is celebratory of the sites legacy and neighbourhood at large preserving its integrity whilst making subtle adaptations enabling greater livability.
Connected House | Architects EAT
Few projects allow as much experimentation as an architects own home, Connected House is no exception. Fifteen years ago architect/client, Albert Mo and his family moved into a 1950s midcentury home designed by Peter McIntyre. For more than a decade they ruminated on design philosophes that would become the driving force behind the extension. The conceptual framework for the project balanced the restoration of architectural heritage with a new approach to outdoor connections and a growing floor plan to accommodate teenage children. The resulting home is as much about garden as it is about building, the daily ritual of living interacts with nature at all levels from the cantilevered lounge room in the canopy of a mature elm, to the dining tables microcosm courtyard garden.
Ararat House | SJB
This is a rural right sizing project, a new chapter in the history of a modest house that enables an older couple to enjoy life in town. Within walking distance of shops, doctors and friends, Casa Parents is the reworking of a 1950s home that their youngest son was the last custodian of. This reimagining of the home captures its carbon and cultural footprint ensuring that its history is amplified. A new good room facing the north to the street includes a private courtyard and a contemporary veranda, while a bathroom box to the rear delivers delight and surprise.
Brunswick Galley House | Topology Studio
Conceptual inspiration for a house centred around a galley was drawn from the experience of our Clients life when they lived on board a narrowboat.
More broadly this house is about family, strengthening the neighbourhood connection and living with a firm understanding that what we do on an individual level directly affects the macro. The design supports everyday interactions with the neighbourhood through graduations of enclosure between public and private spaces and through careful consideration of entry.
Every centimetre is utilised to avoid excess. Reuse of building fabric while improving its thermal performance minimises waste and new materials that are repairable ensure their longevity.
The design plays with scale, spatially and through material pattern. Pockets of saturated colour within a bright interior, enlivened by shifting light. There is dialogue between the details and materials of the original home and the addition, the transition between the two is distinct but seamless.