Hill House

The functional brief was a 4-bedroom home, with a focus around shared family living, and spaces for each family member to pursue their individual interests. A second compact master suite on the ground floor is suited to accommodating extended stays by overseas family.

The clients were not passionate about building a new house, when we first met it was to renovate their existing home, but it became clear that the constraints of their site were not going to work with their brief. We parted ways and were surprised to be contacted a few months later to review a potential new home site - the rest is history!

Permanent home for a busy family of 3 – medico couple with a son in high school. Periodic long stay visits from overseas family.

We took inspiration from the site and the existing character of the area. Wheelers Hill, developed in the 1970s and 80s, is full of grand brick dwellings on large sites - and lots of trees! Large, sloped roofs were popular at the time and sit well within the hilly terrain. The shape of Hill House, particularly the asymmetrical roof form, is a play on this familiar style. This comfortable silhouette also allows the house to face away from its only neighbour and open up to the north aspect and park.

This area of Melbourne is surrounded by abundant public parklands and the views across the canopy of Jells Park nearby and to the Dandenong Ranges beyond are a feature of the site. More immediately, being the last lot on the street, the site is bordered on two side by open parkland which contains an impressive collection of mature gums and other native species, home to abundant (noisy!!) bird life.

Due to the slope, the ground floor is elevated and looks out across the adjacent parkland, first-floor windows look through the upper story foliage and skylights capture the canopies above, giving a treehouse feel. The corner window to the master bedroom frames the Dandenong Ranges in the distance. The ceiling line matches the raked roof, resulting in dramatic volumes to the first-floor rooms. Voids to the entry and living / dining room connect the ground floor with the enveloping and canopy-esque roof above.

For our clients, first generation immigrants, the exercise of building a new home was a significant symbol of their ‘putting down roots’ in their adopted but much-loved country. While it was a celebration of the new life they had made for themselves and their family here, it was important that it honoured and respected their heritage. This was not interpreted literally but through harnessing associations of their formative years in India and blending these elements into a cohesive outcome.

A quote from the client-
“The idea of home is complex for first generation migrants who try very hard to find comfort and familiarity in their adopted country. For us building our new house with John and Steph was a journey of discovering and consolidating our identity as migrants and individuals who have come to love this country as much as our country of birth, India … The house integrates our past and present harmoniously … Their clever and simple design has helped us truly express and celebrate our blended cultural identity.”

A challenge we faced was that the client had never really anticipated building a new home! In fact, most of what they were drawn to by way of inspiration and aspiration were well established, history laden traditional evocations of ‘home’. For example, a humble English stone-clad cottage with its rustic farmhouse kitchen and heavy oak beams – not exactly where we would usually start for a contemporary suburban family home.

It was our challenge to unpack these associations and understand what they symbolised and how these base needs could be reimagined and represented in their new home. Broadly, we identified a desire for solidity and permanence, which found its way in through the solidity of the form and through materiality in the bagged brick cladding. Bringing this material into the interior added substance to key spaces. A more playful example was our take on the ‘chimney’ – a necessary signifier of domestic industry – which was reimagined as the raised skylight shaft (that also projects down into the entry space) adding that essential element to the house’s silhouette.

The project was the first new build, large scale single dwelling completed by the practice. We were reassured that our existing strategies, tried and true for renovations and extensions, held up within the ‘new build’ format. We have always prioritised getting to know our clients, their homes and understanding their daily life to create spaces which support this. While we didn’t have remnants of an existing home to draw inspiration from, there were strong feelings about what ‘home’ should be. We found that exploring these ideas was just as fruitful as examining the history and aspirations of a renovation / extension project, and the results, we feel, show that a new build can be just as layered, rich and personality filled.

We love that this house is full of little moments. Some explicitly intended, such as the expressed skylight shaft in the entry which is painted yellow inside and throws warm honey-coloured light into the entry whatever the weather and the knockout view of The Dandenongs from the master bedroom, framed by lowered windows and best appreciated from the bed. Others have come about as a combination of the house and how the clients have made it their own; an artwork complimenting the tones of the timber, a windowsill now home to their collections or the treetop retreat with a framed window nook providing a quiet place to read and watch the world go by.

The clients love their home. They have loved sharing it with family and friends and have welcomed us back to share stories of their settling in, and how their living patterns have changed as they have gotten to know their home. It feels like a true reflection of them, one that will continue to grow and change as their family needs do. They are proud of the life they have built in their adopted country, and this home is testament to that.

A quote from the client-
“Our new house has proven to be a place for respite and joy that we look forward to coming back to every day. There is a constructive relationship with elements of nature, there is serenity and enough room to hide and display things. I remember a quote from Fountainhead, one of the first few books that had impressed me as a young adult. “A house can have integrity, just like a person.” We wanted a house that was true to its purpose, was simple, yet had character and we are grateful to Inbetween Architecture for building a house that truly reflects that.”

A base palette of white and timber was used throughout – both externally and internally. We used timber abundantly, in rich tones, to allude to the traditional Indian domestic vernacular - typified by white rendered surfaces with timber and / or terracotta features. It also gives a sense of human scale, tactility and ‘handmade-ness’ to the home. The approach to materials (and many other aspects) was to treat each space / decision on its own merits, rather than subscribe to a certain look or theme. This results in a mixed arrangement of materials and elements (no two windows are the same throughout the whole project!) where eclecticism is easily accommodated.

Targeted bold colour creates moments of surprise and delight, inspired by the colours of festival and celebration. Coloured glass in the stairway and kitchen windows, warmth to the skylight shaft over the entry and luxurious goat hair carpet to the bedrooms, bring the joyful hues of orange, green, red and yellow into the everyday experience of the home. These focal points are injected sparingly, allowing a further layer of colour and pattern to be introduced with furniture, soft furnishings and artworks – blurring the line between the building fabric and the decoration.