Sensitive Tactility – Merriwee by Templeton Architecture
Extending from its art deco origins, Merriwee celebrates the uniquely crafted elements and proportions of the original home in its expansion and deliberate connection with its generous site. Templeton Architecture combines a sensitive tactility that allows the new to appropriately interweave with the old and solidify its character and charm.
Generously sited in Melbourne’s inner south, Merriwee is located in Toorak and sits amongst similarly-scaled neighbours. In its original inception as a stucco art deco home, the formality and detailing expressed an explorative time, when a play on pattern and a grandness of scale and presence was still relevant in residential architecture. Extending from this, the new double level addition aims to capture the spirit and charm of the original home and breathe a contemporary relevance into the resulting spaces, opening and engaging beyond the building edge. Templeton Architecture adopts an intuitive approach, interweaving sensitive gestures that allow for an increase in overall form, while remaining one that addresses and participates with its site.
Home to its family of six, the additional floor space needed to feel like a natural evolution from the original, creating an opportunity for the family to coexist harmoniously. In considering the needs of a family unit, the home needed to offer an array of spaces for each of its occupants – both small and intimate in some cases, and then more open and engaging in active shared areas. Due to the sloping of the site, the positioning of the building and its setback, the new sits nicely concealed from the street, as a further extension of core embedded principles of subtlety. The resulting home feels deliberate, and its use of brick and its regular and controlled formality responds to the original, offering a rigour and balance to the happenings of family life.
Built by SL Constructions, together with landscaping by Grounded Gardens, the new works of Merriwee are inspired by an optimisation and an address of its surrounds. Through a holistic approach, both the outdoor and indoor space is approached with a shared visible connectedness. The original use of repetition and tactility is expressed in the new, where crafted elements such as bricks are used en mass to conjure new formal elements. The inherited lightness of the home is carried through into the new, with a calming and muted palette of neutral tones and an emphasis on light and dark in how spaces engage with light throughout the day.
Merriwee combines the handmade and crafted elements of its past with its deliberate present. In utilising texture and tactility as the expression of place, Templeton Architecture has carefully curated a home connected to its milieu and idyllically responsive to the life of its owners.
