Door to the past
Homeowners across the country have opened their doors for the second season of Restoration Australia. The show’s host, architect Stuart Harrison, tells DANIELLE MCGRANE about the restoration of Australia’s modern history.
An 18th-century castle has as much value to Stuart Harrison as a 1965 suburban Australian home.
The architect believes in treasuring the living history that the post-war home represents.
“I’m passionate about all the periods, but the post-war ones are interesting because they’re in living memory and you can often talk to people who were around when they were built and that’s a strong connection to the past,” Harrison said.
The new host for the second season of Restoration
Australia, Harrison follows seven historically important buildings, from grand terraces to small countryside homesteads, that are all in need of some TLC.
But it’s two post-war houses in the series that he’s most excited about.
“I’m passionate about this period because it’s typically overlooked and it’s often work that’s not heritage-listed,” he said.
What these houses represent, according to Harrison, is a chance to change people’s perceptions of what the definition of heritage is.
“We’re starting the season with a 1965 house, not an 1865 house, and I think that’s an important idea that history and restoration is not only about really old stuff, it can be about recent stuff, certainly in the 20th century and in the second half of the 20th century,” he said.
“When you say ‘restoration’, people tend to think of restoring old churches into houses – and we’ve got a few of those and they’re good projects – but it’s not just about that.”
The idea isn’t to create exact replicas or museum houses completely stuck in the past. Restoration is often about adapting a building to suit modern needs.
“One of the common themes on the show is that nobody wants to live in a house as it was in 1870 because it didn’t have a toilet inside, for example, or it didn’t have a kitchen in a place where you want a kitchen, or it didn’t have a connection to the garden and it didn’t have en suites,” he said.
“What people want nowadays is contemporary modes of living inserted into historic fabric. So as a result of that, the buildings need to be modified to suit.”
Many of the homes featured on this season didn’t actually start out as houses – some are conversions from stables or former gasworks.
“All these projects, even though they’re heritage and restoration projects, they have new elements being considered into them. In fact it’s a bit of a trade-off between restoration and design and that’s the area that interests me the most,” he said.
“This is not a museum, we’re not trying to reconstruct a house as it was back then, we’re trying to make these buildings liveable and that’s an important lesson.”
Some of the more liveable aspects of design didn’t exist when these homes were first built.
“Most people love the history, but they need all the things they need for modern life. They need to respect the past, but do it with open-plan living, for example.
“Open-plan living is an idea that’s 70 years old, not 170 years old. So I think the owners get that and it creates some interesting decisions that need to be made,” he said.
The owners, while they are restoring different buildings from various eras in history, have quite a lot in common.
“All the people are gutsy, they’re all prepared to risk things and risk their money, but they’re also all interested in history and trying to find out about their building,” he said.
Harrison believes that what they cover on the show could have an influence on the design landscape of the country.
“I think the show’s gone a long way to save restoration from the world of antiques. It is a dynamic, contemporary idea to restore an existing building and to do it well,” he said.