Walking on Glass – Glass house by Ben Callery Architects

By taking the path less travelled, Glass House is conceived through a lens of openness and connection, ensuring the narrow home sits generously behind its original heritage façade. Ben Callery Architects conceals the extension and inserts a trafficable glass roof to bring light deep into the home.

Nested behind a Victorian worker’s cottage front in Melbourne’s Carlton North, Glass House draws on translucency to both connect levels and to illuminate internal spaces. As the new home to downsizers, the slightness of the site and narrowness of the available allotment required a unique approach, one that would increase a perceived generosity of volume. Tucked out of sight from the street, the additional level allows the tightly packed brief to be fulfilled, ensuring the contemporary addition does not interfere with the heritage façade on approach. Having spent years living in tight urban environments in both The Hague and Singapore, the owners openly embraced the resulting creative approach. Ben Callery Architects carves a new series of connections between the interior and the exterior elements, focusing on sightlines and openings to key orientations.

Built by CRD, together with landscaping by Stem, the limitations of the site were turned into opportunities – the need to extend upward both opened the volume and achieved the program of the home.

Glass House is flanked by two other existing heritage row homes, a mere five metres between each. Built by CRD, together with landscaping by Stem, the limitations of the site were turned into opportunities – the need to extend upward both opened the volume and achieved the program of the home. Retaining the original façade and front rooms, the new addition sits neatly behind, out of view, welcoming the second story. Utilising the original roof as an outdoor deck, the additional living space opens to views to the north, while a glazed façade brings light in and down to the level below by way of a 30-milimetre thick glass floor. The insertion acts as a non-direct sky light and helps to animate the home in the process.

Raking upward, the roof slowly opens the interior to the rear yard, bringing in more natural light. A soft palette of white and neutral tones is then used throughout with an equally light timber, adding warmth and a contemporary element that connects the natural underfoot and custom joinery. Painting the original brickwork of the cottage further lightens the home, while retaining the memory of the previous narrative and adding textural difference. The structural members, which were needed to support the second story, were transformed into additional shelving to conceal and integrate the newer elements into the body of the home.

A soft palette of white and neutral tones is then used throughout with an equally light timber, adding warmth and a contemporary element that connects the natural underfoot and custom joinery.

Glass House feels both familiar and welcoming. Through clever insertions, Ben Callery Architects has elongated the lineage of the previous cottage, aptly embracing its newer elements.