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The May House is located in the leafy suburbs of Malvern. This house was built in 1980.
Once Neil and Mel had managed to purchase this house, they came to us
with a brief to fully renovate the house. When we saw this project,
one of the things we saw was the value in what had been built here in the 80s.
We wanted to further add and complement that rather than just do a new build; it was really
to bring new richness to something which was already a solid and well-considered house.
We wanted to maintain the strong simple form of the house. The front of the house,
as it used to present to the street, had a false cement clad parapet. Our idea was to
remove the cladding to that and keep the truss and then cover it with this perforated screen
which is beautiful to look through from both the outside but also the inside of the main bedroom.
The carport structure was made from off-form concrete. It was something that
we felt complemented the existing brickwork. In addition to that, we use the roughcast concrete
render on the front fence, which then speaks to the predominant housing types in this area.
There's a nice story of materials fitting into the streetscape as well as into the architecture.
We looked into using materials that was complementary to the 1980s in terms of
natural stones. The colour tones, the rusty reds, the green stone,
all of these things that take me back to my childhood in the 80s.
It spoke very much to the time it was built but there was a modern edge on all of those things.
In the kitchen, we wanted to bring a sense of fun and colour and drama into the space.
The idea of bringing the red tone through the Artedomus splash back tile and
the red vein through the stone and then into the cabinetry colour was a strong idea.
The bar which is adjacent to the kitchen, there's a point of difference and that was where we used a
green marble and once again, looking back to the 80s, the idea of green granites and green stones
was very much part of that era. Bringing a pop of that back into this house was a really fun idea.
We enjoy collaborating with lots of different landscape architects.
On this particular project, we worked with Eckersley's.
Because of the steepness of the existing side, part of the brief was to deal with
all the changes in levels, creating the sense of entrance and introducing a series of form
concrete planters and walls that guide you through the space was a key part to our design.
The most transformative parts of this project would be the new garden,
which is taken over from where the driveway is. Instead of looking onto driveway,
you're looking into all these birches popping up through an understory of beautiful planting.
That's one of the really great outcomes of this project.
A reimagining of a 1980s house in the way we have selected and detailed the joinery and finishes, it
has that very casual relaxed feel that it always did have and is what draws people into this house.
It's very much a people's gathering place and a party house and
somewhere so conducive to bringing people together.
There were a lot of good things in the 80s and also quite a few
tragic things that were done in the 80s and I think one of the things
about this house was it was quite austere. The rejuvenation of all of the interior spaces
and the new materials that have been added bring a sense of quality, warmth and timelessness that
will help set this house on to not date but provide amenity to the family in the future.
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