A Considered Balance – Clifton Hill House by Winter Architecture

Enlivening an existing heritage terrace home, Winter Architecture plays with elements of balance, contrast and restraint in bringing a contemporary robustness together with the ornate detailing of the home’s past. Encouraging a dialogue with the natural, Clifton Hill House welcomes natural light to illuminate its internal zones.

In amongst a streetscape of similar vintage homes within Melbourne’s inner north, Clifton Hill House’s heritage remnants offer an important contribution to the area’s rich architectural history. As a single-fronted terrace home, the slightness and narrowness of its site is a familiar story, blocking natural light and creating a very linear plan. As a counter to this, a modern sensibility was adopted as the overarching theme, with the aim being to open up and embrace the natural as much as possible. Repairing and restoring the home was also a high priority. The new works are founded on the principle that the regenerated space will be rented and consequently needed to be designed with an integrated level of robustness. Winter Architecture combines a considered restraint together with a clean and contemporary palette in opening up the home and encouraging natural illumination.

Winter Architecture combine a considered restraint together with a clean and contemporary palette in opening up the home and encouraging a natural illumination to occur.

Designing a house for someone else to live in without knowing them has its limitations. And consequently, the approach for Clifton Hill House needed to offer an element of universal appeal, while still acting as a considered fusion between the old and the new, respectfully. The resulting palette of simplified whites, blacks and muted timbers then creates an ideal platform for the home, un-inhibited by trends or a high-end approach, but withstanding of any number of uses. As a result, the home is a response to the current time, answering a call for a residence that can be adapted through moveable elements like furniture, artwork and lighting as a means to personalise, while still being contemporary in its own way.

Built by Smart Building Concepts and with engineering by Tebbs Engineering, Clifton Hill House faces the challenges of its narrow site and the existing formal arrangements of the heritage component of the home. Working within those constraints, it was also imperative that the renovated and extended home felt spacious and connected. Contrast is used in both materiality and form to carve out controlled openings that carefully balance a sense of intimacy internally, through layered warmth. Adhering to a strict budget allowed a clear vision of planning, extent and the chosen durability of materials to be outlined early on. Following a simplified approach, clean lines and framed views are created, with operable elements that open and connect beyond the building envelope.

The resulting palette of simplified whites, blacks and muted timbers then creates an ideal platform for the home, un-inhibited by trends or a high-end approach, but withstanding of any number of uses.

Clifton Hill House combines experimentation with a cost-value clarity in creating a home to appeal to its temporary resident, while paying due respect to its architectural past. Winter Architecture has carefully balanced an otherwise non-linear brief, and through its open considerateness, created a home as the ideal foundation for life to be injected into it.