Musical Chairs—Californian Bungalow Addition

Clients Kate and Tim dance to their own tune. It shows in Topology Studio’s nuanced, idiosyncratic renovation of their Brunswick home – a rundown former student share house that the Perth couple bought remotely before relocating to London. After a decade there living on a narrowboat and in one-bedroom apartments, where they managed just fine with the bikes and turntables that make life tick for these music-loving cyclists, Kate and Tim decided their next adventure should involve a move to Melbourne and a compact renovation of their “antiquated and horrendous” house in Brunswick.

Their brief evolved over several years of discussions with friends-of-friends, Amy Hallet and Darren Kaye, of Topology Studio. “We said, ‘We’ll have many dogs and probably no kids’,” Kate recalls with a laugh. “Now we have one dog and two kids.” Other requirements were immutable. With seven bikes as their main form of transportation, Tim says there needed to be “a natural flow” from the rear laneway and through the garden for stowing bikes and gear on their way into the house. For extended visits from family they needed flexible bedrooms which would adapt for changing needs, a second bathroom and a rear kitchen and dining/living space centred around music over television (which would be relegated to a separate room at the front of the house).

Display space was a must for cherished collections including vinyl, fridge magnets from their travels, and a beloved vintage pantry they’d found roadside and lugged across the Nullarbor. They needed a large dining setting for regular get-togethers but with a narrow, scullery-style kitchen to preclude group cleanups, enabling everyone simply to hangout instead. At the front, connecting to their sociable street was key. Since sons Dylan and Hugo came along, impromptu playtime with neighbours has become a regular pleasure for them all.

“With a tight site, a heritage overlay and a northfacing rear [there was] a natural layout,” Tim says. Kitchen and living space at the north-facing rear, and additional bathroom and bedrooms upstairs all spoke for themselves. But the couple was open about how best to make it all hum. “We wanted an open dialogue with Topology,” he says.

Topology’s Amy Hallett and Darren Kaye had also lived in London, and shared their clients’ appreciation for the spatial ingenuity of narrowboats. “Every millimetre is used,” Amy says. “Everything’s thought about and there’s no wasted space. Everything’s multipurpose and spaces overlap. That was really important to them.” The design response upgrades the original front of the house (restumping, repainting and insulating to improve energy efficiency), and repurposes three of the four rooms to unlock the floor plan.

playful front garden via vintage double doors which open onto a timber deck enclosed on two sides by a low, L-shaped concrete beach-seat. It’s a perfect place to prop for impromptu catch-ups with neighbours, and naturally steers formal visitors down a path to the formerly obscured side entry. A pop-out window offers glimpses into the new kitchen of a rear addition whose angular, double-storey form is clad in robust white ply to recede into the original roofline and sky beyond.

The family often enters from the rear laneway, bringing bikes through a sweet nature-play garden by Miniscapes (complete with outdoor bath) to an undercover service zone before peeling off gear in an elegant laundry/mudroom. Both formal and informal entrances lead to the home’s new heart: a light-filled, double-height living and dining space that brings the serene, acoustically quiet, white-painted ply exterior indoors. It’s awash with shadow-play thanks to skylights and delicate timber detailing inspired by the California bungalow’s many quirks. All beautifully executed by builders Technique Built.

The hardworking timber kitchen is long, slim and compressed overhead, just like a narrowboat. It features discrete space for meal preparation and central nooks for seating, play and spinning vinyl. Amy concedes achieving the music-lovers’ dream of decks mid-kitchen took some finessing, especially protection from a nearby tap. “Getting the separation and proximity right was actually a really tricky bit of joinery to resolve,” she says.

It’s upstairs that this clever addition’s spatial complexity is fully revealed. The dramatic, asymmetrical roofline responds to neighbouring forms and heritage restrictions. Compressing to the east and soaring to the west, it creates wildly different volumes and atmospheres even in neighbouring bedrooms. Tall, shuttered windows admit glorious views at the north-facing rear while maintaining privacy. Above the staircase, complex junctions are concealed behind a cloud-like bulkhead that’s stunningly sculptural.

“What’s lovely about pitching the roof up is you get this changing geometry,” Darren says. “You get the double-height space around the kitchen, it gets quite low in the stairs and it pitches up in the bedrooms.” Animating all this are more idiosyncratic detailing: riotously patterned bathroom tiles, for example, and open display joinery in the hallway that doubles as a children’s climbing frame. “I just love watching the kids enjoy the space,” Kate says. “It’s quite open but we also have zones … and running races and little nooks and crannies, and they can read in an upstairs book nook … and still talk to us in the kitchen.”

And for all four, amongst it all, playing records together has become the soundtrack to family life. “Music is at the heart of the home,” she says.

Inside issue 100 — Grab the issue here.