Worldly Desires
For his own home in Melbourne, design writer Stephen Crafti took cues from iconic architecture in Europe and beyond.
Design writer Stephen Crafti opens the door to his own home, where French inspiration is interpreted in a perfectly Melbourne manner.
Melbourne is often described as Australia’s most cosmopolitan city. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that when architect Robert Simeoni presented this house – my own, in an inner suburb – at the prestigious World Architecture Festival awards in 2019, the judges’ consensus was that it could easily be located in any European city. The inspiration for the design was Pierre Chareau’s La Maison de Verre in Paris. Completed in 1932, La Maison de Verre – a threestorey glass and metal warehouse conversion – is worlds apart, both in distance and budget, from this home. From the outset, my partner Naomi and I never really thought there was much chance of emulating such a design icon. What we began with was a simple two-storey duplex, built between the wars, that we intended to convert into a single dwelling. Each apartment had virtually identical floor plans comprising a separate living room, two bedrooms and a rudimentary bathroom and kitchen. A rickety timber staircase at the rear led to a pocket-sized stretch of concrete.
When we purchased the building almost 11 years ago, even speaking of La Maison de Verre and our house in the same sentence would have been ludicrous. It had a few redeeming features, though: decorative ceilings, chunky walls, wide skirting boards and timber floors (even if they were concealed beneath beer-stained carpets).
At our first client meeting a desire to include glass bricks, a key feature of Chareau’s design, was discussed (we didn’t end up using them). The conversation also covered the idea of putting in a ‘non-kitchen’ – that is, a kitchen for someone who doesn’t like to cook. Two of the upstairs rooms were to become separate dressing areas, a luxury for a couple of emptynesters who treat their pampered feline, Harvey, as if he were the true homeowner.
We were keen to imbue the original house with a more sumptuous and layered feel, creating a sense of the 1930s but contemporising the design. “I thought it was important to create an extension that resonated with, rather than mimicked, the building’s 1930s heritage,” says Robert. So instead of treating the original part of the home as a lesser entity than the proposed new extension, which comprised a kitchen and dining area, Robert embraced the home’s original fabric and its imperfections. Every move made in this highly bespoke design was carefully considered – from the brownish-black D-tiles in the two bathrooms to the glass tiles sourced from Belgium for the fireplace hearth, in what is now the living area.
In contrast to the original thick-masonry walls, Robert conceived a steel-and-glass double-height extension with a fixed concertinaed glass wall allowing diffused northern light to enter. And, unlike the typical Aussie extension with large clear-glass doors opening out to a backyard, here there is translucent glass – and just a sliver of clear glass. This is to allow a view out to the garden only when one is seated at the dining table.
A ‘floating’ concrete bench in the kitchen has been teamed with steel open shelving and a polished concrete floor. As with all great architecture, there was an element of surprise that wasn’t fully appreciated when the initial schematics were revealed. For example, a high window allows natural light to create a beautiful painterly effect on the white wall above the kitchen joinery.
The generous jury citation for the Australian Institute of Architects’ national award included the statement that “being inside is rather like inhabiting a late Rothko painting, where the eyes adjust to participate in a slow reveal of dark tonalities and subdued textures”. We’d picked out three different blacks for our painter to use on the walls and joinery in the kitchen and adjacent library.
This is a home filled with furniture and objects collected over decades. Lighting and furniture designer Suzie Stanford has also added her own unique ‘brushstrokes’, with her rich tapestry furniture (Chareau coincidently designed tapestry chairs for his masterpiece) and crystal pendants and wall sconces conceived as art as much as illumination. This crystal is of the type that would have been given as wedding gifts when the duplex was built. This house is no longer the worst house in the street – far from it – even though from the front it still appears quite original. And while comparisons can be made to Milan or Paris, our home is Melbourne through and through.
Robert Simeoni Architects, Carlton, Victoria; (03) 9347 4411 or robertsimeoniarchitects.com.
“I WANTED TO PROVIDE A SIMILARLY SOFT LIGHT, SO THE OLD AND NEW PARTS OF THE HOME WOULD BLUR.”
Robert Simeoni, architect