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Garden House by Zen Architects
In 1914, American architect-duo Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, renowned for the design of Canberra City, were commissioned to design an exclusive housing estate – the Mount Eagle Estate – 10 kilometres north-east of Melbourne’s CBD on the land of the Wurundjeri people. Sweeping boulevards, pedigree trees and community parks defined an entirely novel way of life, which has since retained its relevance to influence a recent resurrection by Zen Architects of one of the estate’s original homes.
Bounded by the Yarra River, Ivanhoe and Heidelberg, Eaglemont is a verdant suburb with a rich biodiversity. At its heart, Mount Eagle Estate has been largely absorbed into the evolution of the suburb over the past century, although its curved roadways that wrap and follow the topography of the land remain, as do the wedge-shaped blocks that were a natural outcome of urban planning and a handful of the original brick residences, including one of the last to be built within the early 1930s subdivision, Garden House.
Over the past 20 years, Garden House has played centrestage in the lives of a family. With the children now fully-fledged adults, their parents remain, hosting visiting family members and spending much of their time in the garden, which slopes heavily away from the house to give the impression of soaring elevation.
“When we first got on site, we sought to understand the issues with the existing house, the site conditions and the historical significance of the original estate,” explains Luke Rhodes, Director of Zen Architects. Standing four rooms wide and four rooms deep, the home had been subjected to minimal changes over the years. “There are a lot of big houses in the estate. We were very aware of that, and what we connected on with the client was that they were really happy with the amount of space they had, just not how it was configured. It gave us a lot of freedom to explore different design outcomes and follow a process that can sometimes come with a difficult conversation attached, which was absent here, doing more with less.”
Luke explains that “in our initial conceptual thinking, we looked at the way the house had been occupied, the way the clients had subconsciously pushed their furniture to the perimeter of the house, chasing light and a connection to the garden whilst leaving an empty, dark space in the interior.” Referring back to the Griffins’ estate design and the teardrop shape of the community gardens that it once included, Zen Architects reflected its curved topographical gestures and fluidity to reach an optimal architectural outcome for Garden House by carving into the floor plate at the rear. A curve was quite literally cut into the original linear layout, bringing light all the way into an open plan living, kitchen and dining zone and creating a seamless glazed threshold between house and garden to bring them into gentle alliance.
At the front, Garden House is largely in its original form, although up-dates have been made to significantly optimise thermal comfort. “We kept the front three rooms and re-used all the finishes, refitting original doors, windows, architraves and skirtings,” Luke says. Ensuring the historical narrative of the home was preserved whilst bringing it up to modern standards, floors were insulated, and seals and flyscreens fitted to windows to keep the cold air out and warm air in during winter and allow ventilation in the summer months. The outcome is that this now fully electric home retains the resonant beauty of its 1930s character yet also exceeds the contemporary 6-star minimum energy rating. As Luke says, “when you are dealing with half to one third of a house built in the early 1900s, it can be really tricky at times to get the whole house up to a minimum energy standard, so we really consider the extension components that we do.
Upon entry, one is immediately greeted with a panoramic view of the garden beyond, where previously “you had to walk through four rooms to really understand it,” Luke recalls. Moving into the extension, the connection to the garden is matched by a dedication to materials that are timeless whilst again referencing the local subdivision. Slate floors, brass, Victorian ash and Italian opal glass pendants cultivate a sense of austerity, allowing the vibrancy of the garden to become the focal point. Curved wall and joinery compositions continue inside, extending from the arc of the glass at the rear elevation and softening transitions between spaces – moving in and out of the kitchen and following the stairs down into a sunken lounge. Sweeping the navigation down and into this lounge immerses the inhabitants further in the landscape and lowers the line of the house into the sloped site so that an elevated terrace, which once rose above the garden and denied access to it, has been eradicated.
“Once you come into the lounge, the experience is very different,” Luke describes. “The ceiling is the same height as the rest of the living zone, but the floor is dropped. A slot window frames and homes in on an established mahogany gum. Remnant manna gums, river red gums and mahogany gums are still peppered throughout the estate,” instilling a poignant sense of history. Stepping out through the rear façade, a transitional threshold has been cultivated by a Victorian ash-lined soffit and silvertop ash decking that breaks up the pattern language of creamy masonry. To one side is the transparent delineation of Garden House’s interior, and to the other, the garden beckons.
In unveiling the historical significance of the Mount Eagle Estate and reconciling it with the rituals and living patterns of the clients, Zen Architects has eloquently opened Garden House to light and nature whilst subtly future proofing it for another century. A home that was once caught, bound and walled has been considerately carved into a new relevance that balances the legacy of the Griffins with an intuitive liveability for those that reside within it and its garden.
