Munnering Lane

Once home to John Lawson Furniture, downstairs entailed furniture making, while upstairs, the timber was treated. The history of this 1889 building can still be seen in the slightly faded letters of the proprietor’s name across a rear brick wall. For the owners, Mark, a photographer, and his wife Sal, a screenwriter, this warehouse provided an opportunity to scale down from a family home. “We wanted to retain the industrial aesthetic but also a comfortable home and, importantly, a separate studio for Sal. I also thought there was an opportunity to display my photography,” says Mark.

Fronting a cobblestone laneway and on a relatively modest parcel of land (approximately 180 square metres), the two-storey, triple-brick warehouse had been renovated in the 1980s. A past adaption that included a white laminate kitchen and rudimentary partition loosely dividing the open-plan spaces. The couple engaged McIIdowie Partners, working closely with the director, architect Craig Brown, architect Laura Binazzi and interior designer Emma Ross-Edwards, both associates of the practice.

The warehouse still appears intact. However, what was once a carriageway to the side of the building, used to deliver furniture, is now enclosed. This space is now used as a gallery to display Mark’s photography, captured on his travels to India, East Africa, Vietnam and the South Pacific. While Mark’s photography is immersive upon arrival, so too is the ‘tapestry’ of wall-to-wall books seen in Sal’s studio, a detached concrete structure with floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors, in the back terrace. “We wanted to create a solid structure for the study in response to the original building’s thick brick walls,” says Brown, pointing out the massive concrete beam that frames the entire studio width and doubles as a planter box.

McIIdowie Partners also touched every surface of the warehouse, reconfiguring the ground floor to include two bedrooms, including the main bedroom, each with an ensuite. And on the first floor are the open plan kitchen, dining and living areas, with a large terrace leading from the kitchen that includes a built-in barbeque and a pizza oven. Original brick walls have been left exposed, “We wanted to retain as much of the original fabric as possible, giving it that industrial aesthetic,” says Ross-Edwards, pointing out the chunky timber trusses that traverse the first floor. The new kitchen also has a rich and slightly worn patina with what was originally a carpenter’s bench, featuring marks still bearing many years of use. The bench, which belonged to Mark, has been carefully ‘stitched’ with a new marble bench and refitted with a sink and mixer tap. And to complement these touches are industrial pendant lights and strategically placed spotlights in the rafters that accentuate the past.

Given the warehouse is triple brick, few if any, cracks were found during the renovation. However, some of the timber window frames had become rotten and needed to be replaced. Some of the new steel windows took their design cue from those being replaced, while others, such as the steel-framed doors to the garden, strengthened the connection between the indoors and out. The black-stained timber storage unit directly below the terrace conceals the couple’s bikes, and an outdoor shower is a testimony to their love of the outdoors, which is also beautifully captured in Mark’s landscape images.

While some may have endeavoured to create a sleek urban pad on the edge of town for a couple of empty nesters, for both the owners and the architects, the impetus for this renovation was to create things as simple as possible, allowing the history of this warehouse to be ‘read’ and clearly understood. “We didn’t want this place to be overdesigned. Part of the pleasure is imagining how the furniture arrived and seeing where it was finished. And given our children occasionally come to stay, there was the opportunity to make the spaces permeable,” adds Mark.