Project name: Hawthorn Hood House
Architecture: BENT Architecture
Interior Designers: Bent Architecture
Builders: Arundel Constructions
Structural Engineers: Clive Steele Partners
Project Team: Paul Porjazoski, Michael Germano, Joanna Butler, Tilde Sheppard, Merran Porjazoski & Lana Blazanin
Location: Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia
Area: 451 m2
Year: 2023
Photo Credits: Tatjana Plitt
Text by BENT Architecture
The Hawthorn Hood House clients (a couple of professionals with primary school-aged twins) approached our studio to design a renovation extension for a house that they occupied in a neighboring suburb. It became apparent, through early investigations, that the resultant design would likely be heavily compromised due to a number of inherent limitations in the house and site, the most significant being the solar orientation of the allotment.
The original house has a strong period character and is protected by a Heritage overlay. Rather than turn its back on the form and materiality of the original home, our response was to engage with and reinterpret the characteristics that define it, in particular, the grand proportions of the existing interior spaces and the highly articulated terracotta roof form. The project commenced by ‘unclipping’ a previous extension renovation at the rear of the home and re-programming the floor plan to harness the sun-filled rear yard.
Bedrooms and utilities occupy the original home and the spacious roof form, whilst new living areas, positioned to the north of the original house, draw upon the grandeur of the original interiors, harness northern sunlight, and frame views of the backyard and pool. The new living areas are defined externally as a reclamation of the roof of the original house, folding down at the rear of the house in response to the function of the spaces within whilst offering a sympathetic nod to the original house and the surrounding rooflines of its heritage neighborhood.
