Instilling Connection – Somers Avenue by JCB Architects

Expanding an original heritage home, Somers Ave undergoes a journey of creating new and better-conceived connections. JCB Architects beautifully articulates the newly expanded home through elements of refinement and considered detailing.

Nestled into leafy Malvern in Melbourne’s inner south-east, Somers Avenue is located comfortably in its setting of similar neighbours of heritage-era recognition. The original home is expanded through the lens of the contemporary residential condition. While maintaining the original formality of the home’s bygone era, the new insertions open up and unite the spaces, bridging the old and the new and creating key connections between the formal built elements and the natural softened landscape it sits amongst. JCB Architects combines a clear vision through minimal and well-articulated gestures with select materiality and refined finishes to create moments of clarity and openness throughout.

Built by Krongold Group, Somers Avenue is the collaborative effort of JCB Architects with interiors and styling by Allison Pye Interiors. The consideration of detailing throughout is evident in the nuanced junctions and textural tactile elements that the owners engage with on an everyday basis. At 600sqm, the home’s generous footprint makes better use of its expansive site while still maintaining key associations to its lush garden setting. Bridging the rigid, structured planning of heritage homes with the present requirement for openness becomes one of the biggest challenges of renovating existing homes, and here the key to the new works is connection, reflecting the way most families live today.

Split over two levels, the addition separates the adult and children’s zones, while still working within a constrained formal expression on site. The upper floor takes shape under its hip-roof structure, while creating minimal streetscape disruption and disguising the additional amenity to the rear. The stair acts as a light well in the centre of the old and the new, bringing natural light into the heart of the home. The additional informal living and dining areas on ground level open up to the garden, with generous and fully retractable glazed elements to disseminate the threshold between inside and out. Throughout, the use of the natural landscape elements and training creeper plantings has aided in blending the new elements and making them seem as though they have existed for the duration of the original home.

Somers Avenue shows how a play on restraint and considered detail can extend the life of our heritage homes, adding a present relevance and an enduring timelessness for years to come. Through layering in textures and materiality, JCB Architects together with Allison Pye Interiors have added a unique richness and a curious complexity to this welcoming family home.