A Respectful Softening – Clark House by SJB

The extension and adaption of renowned Australian architect John James Clark’s own residence, built in 1869, Clark House is a considered and methodical series of updating gestures. SJB approached the extension and renovation works through a respectful heritage lens, allowing the significant home to be enhanced through an opening and softening approach.

In its East Melbourne milieu, Clark House is a familiar siting – surrounded by similar-era Victoria homes, the home sits proud and stately in its ornate detailing and the way the façade engages with its streetscape. As the private residence of John James Clark, architect of significant Melbourne buildings including the Melbourne City baths and te old Treasury Building, the house captured his own style as a visionary of the time and as well as an expression of craft known of the era. When inherited by its new custodians, there was an inevitable obligation to preserve and protect the original intent. The new works are conceived under the significant heritage overlay that it is blanketed with, and through close collaboration with heritage specialists, SJB proposes a home that respectfully fuses past and present.

As the private residence of John James Clark, the house captured his own style as a visionary of the time and as well as an expression of craft known of the era.

A lengthy process spanning near to three years, the project is the result of coordination with Heritage Victoria and the local council to ensure relevant details were retained. The renovation is both a restoration and extension effort, ensuring an elongation of the home’s previous narrative and the architect’s vision, together through a contemporary lens that allows for a diffusing of formality in its added elements. While the interiors are restored through a freshness and intentional softening, greater visual connection is injected. As an extension of the core philosophies of the heritage home, furniture and inserted objects reinforce a visual openness, while still allowing for an expression of the crafted items that they are.

Externally, a series of gestures allow a reworking of the transition between the existing home and the garden to take place, with the removal of an original octagonal gazebo clearing the way for the extension to be inserted. Carrying on a classically inspired palette, the extension combines a combination of contrasting black and white elements, softened through grey tones and muted textural nods. The home’s original white plaster details and their contrasting framework becomes the muse for the addition, with the styles referenced but not mimicked. As a result, the new inserted elements deliberately feel connected to the original home as a natural evolution, not in competition in any way.

The renovation is both a restoration and extension effort, ensuring an elongation of the home’s previous narrative and the architect’s vision, together through a contemporary lens that allows for a diffusing of formality in its added elements.

Through a deep-seated respect for the original and important heritage elements of Clark House, SJB has created a residence that both captures its original owner and architect John James Clark’s spirit, while also infusing a contemporary extension of its relevance, allowing his lineage to continue.