‘Wear puffer jackets inside’: Heritage house gets tweak to make it feel less like a museum

Capital Gain

A couple with a love of mid-century design, and two adventurous architects who were not afraid to push the boundaries, have returned an unusual ’70s home to its former glory.

Kevin Borland, a post-war Australian architect, regularly pushed boundaries, and his approach to an unusual house in Melbourne’s Glen Iris was no exception. Fast-forward 50 years and there’s synergy in the couple’s decision to choose contemporary architects, WOWOWA – also known for their adventurous stance – to update their mid-1970s Borland-designed house.

Featured in Belle magazine in 1978, the home’s dramatic raked ceiling covering the atrium is visible – at least in form – from the leafy street. Now heritage-listed (only during the architects’ documentation phase), the house could have easily been demolished in the years before that.

Fortunately, a couple with a love of mid-century design purchased the property and were keen to see it restored to its former glory. “The house was in virtually original condition, but it lacked the thermal qualities one expects today. Our clients had to wear puffer jackets inside, particularly during winter,” says architect Monique Woodward, principal and creative director of WOWOWA.

Given the sensitivity of renovating a house of this ilk, Woodward and her team were keen to “tweak” wherever possible.

The house originally had a palm tree in the atrium. Decades later, the indoor brick garden bed in which the palm grew, for years filled with weeds, has been replanted – a relatively easy task. But the atrium’s soaring, single-pane windows and the home’s lack of insulation required a bigger fix – double-glazing for the entire house that ate up a considerable chunk of the budget.

Although the Borland house responded to open-plan living, something that’s preferred today, the galley-style kitchen wasn’t large enough and didn’t provide a strong link to the back-of-house amenities such as the laundry, pantry and powder room.

WOWOWA opened up the kitchen to the dining area, extending the dining room’s bay window an extra 800 millimetres. “The original nook wasn’t large enough for a proper dining table. It was just too tight,” says Woodward, who also removed an exterior spiral steel staircase that led to literally nowhere – just a small landing above. This was replaced with a built-in curved seating nook, following Borland’s aesthetic.

“From the outset, we felt like we were custodians,” says Woodward.

Marble benches might be de rigueur today, but the kitchen’s joinery was replaced using two-pack yellow paint that was popular in the mid-1970s. Shadow lines in the joinery also respond to Borland’s designs.

When it came to upgrading the bathrooms, the tiles couldn’t be saved. However, many of them were reused from the backyard swimming pool (the larger pool was replaced with a smaller circular one). As with Borland’s signature, these tiles have been arranged in a stripey pattern.

And in both the kitchen and bathrooms, the original timber was reused for the benches – removed and re-sanded on site. “From what I’m told, the joiner responsible for the cabinetry work was the first female joiner in Victoria,” says Woodward, who is still searching for her name.

One of the main structural changes in the floor plan, which includes three bedrooms and a study, was reworking the mezzanine study overlooking the atrium. Previously tucked behind a wall, it is now framed in glass that allows it to feel integral to the atrium, akin to sitting on an outdoor terrace.

Although the past has been carefully traced, there was also an opportunity to create a “voice” that is new, but still speaks to Borland’s design. The music room, for example, features a new Japanese-style wallpaper that provides a nod to Australian modernism – a time when architects such as Robin Boyd took inspiration from Japan.

Woodward sees her practice as having a strong visual language – using colour bravely where others opt for “beige”. “We were conscious from the start that it shouldn’t feel like a museum or be a parody of the original design. It was important to get the ‘dial’ exactly right, but a place that also felt comfortable to be in,” she says.

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