The clients are an active family of two professional adults and two children (aged 13 and 9) with busy sporting and social lives and frequent visitors. They wished to convert their introverted, disconnected, uncomfortable and energy-guzzling, 1960’s house into a modern, energy-efficient family home with highly functional social spaces and strong connections to their beautiful surrounding environment.

The challenge on this project was to achieve the greatest transformation with the least extension and as littleobvious alteration as possible. The existing home was a four-bedroom double-brick house with lovely western views, in the Canberra suburb of Campbell. The master bedroom, ensuite, and study were all part of an 1980s extension. The original house was built in the 1960s.

With fundamentally ‘good bones’ from both a design and thermal perspective, and enough floor area, we made very selective internal alterations in order to improve the energy efficiency, spatial relationships, circulation and connection to the outdoors, while only adding 1m² to the building’s footprint. In other words the house was extensively renovated, but it was not extended. This included removing and reconfiguring internal walls, windows, and the kitchen (which is now in a completely new location) as well as the construction of a deck and pergola out the back.

The clients were living and working overseas for the entirety of the design and construction periods, therefore excellent communication and trust was paramount. They were delighted with the smoothness of the process and the quality of the outcome.