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Like many 1930s houses, the interior of this one in the Melbourne, Australia, suburb of South Yarra was drenched in character. But sunlight? Not so much. The homeowner and her children had lived in the historic four-bedroom home for 15 years, but after she hired local AD100 designer David Flack to transform her country house about two hours north, she turned attention to making her city place just as inviting.
The homeowner originally came to know the designer via an Internet search in 2016; learning he was a “Bendigo boy” raised in a town near her farm was as appealing as his interiors. “It was literally a random search, and it worked out brilliantly from there,” says the client, whose family made its name in prize-winning racehorses. “I decided to do a similar lightening and brightening and a bigger build on the city home.”
In the Southern Hemisphere, south-facing light is indirect, which left many of the South Yarra home’s rooms bathed in shadow for most of the day. The abode also had a series of disproportionate prior renovations that made its rear a bit of an architectural jumble, explains Flack. To pull sunlight deep into its core and better highlight the homeowner’s exuberant art collection, the designer demolished these additions and replaced them with a slightly smaller “glass block lantern.” The double-height volume captures daylight from three directions while actually reducing the overall footprint. While home’s total square footage dropped by less than a 100 square feet, the extra space was given to the exteriors, which meant the lush landscaping by Melbourne talent Kate Seddon, enjoyed through new blackened steel–framed glass doors and windows.
Bernard Bijvoet and Pierre Chareau’s 1932 Maison de Verre in Paris inspired Flack’s use of glass blocks as structure in this project, which marks his studio’s first foray into architectural design. (The team now has seven other architecture projects in the works). Inside the day-lit extension—which hosts the living room, kitchen, and a powder room—and throughout the home, he made design moves that add a glowing feel. Glass blocks and steel-framed windows also wrap the dining room and family room. Frosted glass softly illuminates some marble-clad powder rooms and baths. Boldly hued lacquer lightens shadowed surfaces, like the walls, ceiling, and bar front in the front-most room of the historic portion of the house, a space newly re-envisioned as a deep red cocktail lounge, and the now dark green dining ceiling, whose near mirror surface both reflects and references the garden outside.
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The house’s original layout was quite formal, which for the more casual homeowner, meant many rooms went largely unused. With intentional vintage, contemporary, and custom furnishings, Flack transformed them into spaces with purpose. For example, a double-sided On the Rocks sofa by Francesco Binfaré for Edra centers the cozy library, painted a deep yellow ochre. With twin desks, the room can now be a home office, study, or party space, depending on the occasion. The new kitchen offers a breakfast table with a banquette, “a very daily and comfortable addition” that often ends up as the location of four-person dinners, says the homeowner. “I’m a casual entertainer,” she adds. “I like to keep it fairly simple with my grown-up kids, but this house also has very practical spaces to enjoy with friends and family during bigger events.”
Another practical requirement was lots of open walls for the client’s collection of contemporary artworks, many by Australian talents. Their colorful skew is matched by Flack’s whimsical design details, like the triple-border on the bespoke terrazzo floor across the kitchen and living room, the black-and-white striped marble hearth in the library, or the cheeky overlook that extends a piece of the second floor’s circulation into the double-height glass addition. “I think contemporary architecture works really beautifully when there’s a contrast [with the historic], but it’s also important to integrate them,” says Flack.
The old and new portions of this house are certainly given equal design weight, but the transformation’s ultimate focus is optimizing the day-to-day experience for the homeowner. “This house represents David’s ability to translate style and sophistication with a bit of humor, whimsy, and personality,” she says. “There’s nothing precious about it.” And along with sun, that’s exactly what she wanted.
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