Kew Residence
Location: Wurundjeri Country | Kew, Victoria
Client: Private
Phase: Completed
Typology: Housing, Refurbishment, Reuse
Team: Jane Caught, William Bennie, Samuel Torre, Gracie O’Malley-Welby, Riya Salvi
Awards: Shortlisted, 2025 Houses Awards - Alteration & Addition under 200m2 [pending
Location: Wurundjeri Country | Kew, Victoria
Client: Private
Phase: Completed
Typology: Housing, Refurbishment, Reuse
Team: Jane Caught, William Bennie, Samuel Torre, Gracie O’Malley-Welby, Riya Salvi
Awards: Shortlisted, 2025 Houses Awards - Alteration & Addition under 200m2 [pending
From Off-the-Plan to Heirloom
7/7
Kew Residence afforded the opportunity to significantly expand the lifespan of poorly built 1970s developer stock through upgrades and repair; whilst imbuing the home with the personality and chosen lifestyles of its inhabitants. The design team has lovingly updated the house, improving it’s thermal resilience and rendering it delightful for 21st century living.
The project offered Heliotope our first opportunity to explore a minimal construction approach to an existing building, working to enhance it’s best characteristics and improve on those areas that could become more relevant for family life today, rather than spend excessive amounts of money and planetary resources on the upgrades.
This approach allowed us to merge the existing built fabric of the house with a material history of both clients; she bringing a love of native timbers and he London’s built languages of brick and brutalism. These stories were supplemented with copper (a material that can be later dismantled and reused), natural fibres and durable surfaces.
The project fully and substantially remodelled the interior of the existing home upstairs and down, but retained its footprint, maximising green space on the block and demonstrating that well designed houses can be compact and enduringly liveable.
The transformation of this house has been a long journey that evolved alongside our client needs, who having initially shelved the first design iteration to pursue a PhD in New York revisited the project during the early part of the pandemic, re-assessing the needs of their family and returning to the drawing board with a considered brief that was brave enough to challenge standard property market expectations in order to ensure the house could evolve to accommodate two adults and two now teenagers comfortably.
For example by sacrificing a bedroom and an ensuite we were able provide enough personal space for each member of the family. An existing study has been converted into two smaller, soundproof rooms that allow the couple to each work from home whilst remaining present for their children.
Living spaces were opened up and meander throughout the ground floor between a series of material-based forms - connected spaces that facilitate family members undertaking different types of activities whilst remaining present with each other. A significant copper cube forms the island bench that defines the kitchen - reinforcing the pandemic desire to provide generous domestic spaces to socialise with friends in the home (which works just as well today). A sheer twist of perforated mesh refreshes and honours the existing timber stair.
High in the double height living space, a study nook sits above the central tiled volume housing a generous pantry opening as an internal balcony from the older teen’s bedroom and allowing them to participate in family life on their own terms.
Heliotope retained – and celebrates – the existing built fabric where possible. The decision to keep as much of the building as possible, for example the existing terracotta flooring and the stair were both cost effective and assisted in minimising the clients’ exposure to increased prices, another feature of the pandemic. Any new materials introduced will hold value and aim to be reusable at the end of life – significantly, the extensive use of copper in the project.
A key component of the project was in the shoring up of the building, now around 50 years old, for another 50 years of life. Rotting timber windows were upgraded and replaced with double glazing throughout, and external blinds installed to minimise solar heat gain. Automated clerestory windows enable heat evacuation over the summer months, and internal air leaks have been resolved.
The timber structure of the building was restored and brought up to code, and localised termite ingress repaired. As developer stock, when we uncovered the floor structure we found significant joists missing and were able to make good creaking floorboards. All traces of asbestos have been removed; wiring and plumbing have been upgraded, with a heat pump replacing an aging gas HWS.
By significantly extending the life span of this existing house, the embodied carbon of a new build does not need to be expended, contributing to our collective efforts to reduce global warming
