Living Small

Architects Amy Hallett and Darren Kaye worked and travelled together for years before replacing their leaky, termite-infested, dry-rot-riddled cottage, a block from South Melbourne beach, with a rock-solid contemporary home for their young family and Amy’s new practice, Topology Studio.

Their experience shows. And not just in the clean lines, pleasing volumes, meticulous material selection, thermally efficient construction, strong garden connectivity and “peekaboo” sightlines throughout. This is a 150-square-metre house of deliberately modest scale and ambition, whose considerable beauty lies in its subtle, carefully considered detailing. From the smoothly eroded curves on the corners of internal walls to the vintage inspired timber cabinets, tables and door handles made by three generations of Halletts, and even the satisfying “click” of the custom-made front door as it settles into its heavy lock, this is a home designed for all the senses, using low-fi technologies and natural materials that’ll only get better with age.

“The old house was a weatherboard and we got belted by the winds here,” Hallett says. “It moved and was leaky. We did reverse brick veneer at the front so you’ve still got the heritage connection to the street with the timber cladding. But when you’re in here it feels solid and weighted and permanent, which the other house didn’t because they get rickety.”

Rickety or not, the house had history. Originally a Victorian, it was transformed into a modernist inspired weatherboard by a distinctive 1950s renovation that moved the kitchen to the sunny front of the house and added two large corner windows like eyes overlooking the pedestrian-filled street. When Hallett and Kaye bought it on the cheap seven-odd years ago it remained heritage listed despite the modifications. They weren’t allowed to demolish the place but council removed the heritage listing for a substantial redesign it considered of high architectural merit.

“It’s a bit counter-intuitive but I think by them enabling us to … rebuild it we’ve been able to do things that are more in keeping with the 1950s memory of the house,” Hallett says. “Perhaps if they hadn’t, if they’d made us put back the Victorian, that local history would have been lost.”

The couple kept the east-facing kitchen in place, removing one window to the street but enlarging the other and raising sill heights for a degree of privacy. With white-painted walls and burnished concrete floors – a crisp, simple scheme used throughout the redesign – it feels like a contemporary space softened by vintage additions, such as a chimney breast with range cooker and cabinetry featuring American oak door handles made by Hallett’s brother to echo handles on an original bathroom cabinet now repurposed as a wardrobe.

A monumental floor-to-ceiling, 1.6-metre wide slider opens the kitchen onto a pretty side courtyard sheltered enough for dining year-round, and beyond it (via another slider) to Hallett’s home office. It’s a smart space that floods the core with light and ventilation, provides sightlines in all directions and brings the natural world inside. For a compact home it feels remarkably openhearted.

Low-fi, retractable fly screens used here (and throughout) allow doors and windows to open fully on summer nights to cooling south-westerlies. With plenty of thermal mass via the concrete slab and reverse brick veneer construction, an openable skylight that aids venting and ceiling fans in upstairs bedrooms, there’s nothing high-tech needed to keep temperatures stable. “It’s a bit like sailing a ship, I guess,” Kaye quips.

Down a side corridor opposite the kitchen, concealed behind a white-painted, v-joint plywood wall, are a Euro laundry and opposite guest bedroom currently used by the couple’s son for daytime naps. Centrally there’s an American oak staircase leading to bedrooms upstairs. Striking vertical balustrades of chunky, double-height, lime-washed dowel add textural interest and allow for some appealing interplays of light, shadow and vistas.

At the rear is a compact living room with a curved wall and window that give the space a sense of cocooned comfort. “We tried in most spaces to get light from different directions,” Hallett says.

“It creates interesting lighting effects and lovely shadows.” The living room opens onto a simple west-facing rear garden shaded by an expansive old white cedar tree that took some preserving during construction.

Upstairs, the master bedroom features a small terrace overlooking the courtyard – another sheltered spot that’s well used all year. Behind sliding plywood walls there’s a walk-in robe and, beyond, an ensuite illuminated by borrowed light from a corrugated glass wall lining the corridor. At the rear, daughter Millie’s sunny bedroom overlooks the garden and features the same snugly curving walls that make the living room so cosy.

Hallett and Kaye love their home’s connectivity to its neighbourhood and its landscape, and the changing moods of its discreet spaces as light shifts and seasons change. Rigorous planning and alignment create a seamless flow from space to space that makes the entire home feel bigger than it is. “We know small houses can work,” Hallett says. “Keeping the footprint tight enabled us to maintain a building that’s got quite clear forms.

They’re not compromised or chopped off to meet Res Code. We worked with it to try to keep them pure forms, and I think that’s really key in the overall sense of spaciousness.”