New into old: Hawthorn House

This house is a significant, freestanding building on a large title in Hawthorn in Melbourne’s inner east. Its architectural language is predominantly Victorian, but there are also Edwardian and Queen Anne Revival touches, along with a range of other styles accumulated over a lifetime of renovations. Kennedy Nolan’s overarching thinking for this project, with the addition of one freestanding and one adjoining pavilion, was to maintain the sense of a house in a garden and make connections to green spaces wherever possible. Internally they wished to retain the existing qualities of the home: a clearly articulated series of rooms with strong features and unapologetic decoration. Materially, they took their client’s wish for lightness and brightness and instilled this brief with a sense of softness and texture, overlaid with hints of intensity.

The kitchen is located in a late-Victorian room, most likely a billiard room in its original state. It is defined by a monitor roof with a glazed roof light and exposed trusses. Within this room, each of the new elements is like a piece of furniture, allowing the original detail – such as the tiny flower mouldings studding the ceiling framing – to remain a feature. The palette for the room is set by the silver travertine of the floor, with grey marble benchtops, limed timber joinery and reeded glass offering a muted palette. A rich plane of red travertine offers a moment of warmth and intensity in the room, visually anchoring the weighty kitchen bench. Custom steel-framed sliding doors between the kitchen and the other living spaces allow for a sense of the original room to be retained while maintaining transparency to the shared living areas.

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Crisp grey marble delineates where the old floor ends and a new space begins.

Image: Derek Swalwell

The clients’ wish for the private areas of the house was for a sense of separation, allowing each occupant to define their personal zone. Kennedy Nolan believes that bathroom spaces should be as “soft” as possible to allow an occupant to gently ease into their day. So the differing personal needs in these rooms have been expressed through deeper colours, muted tones and low lighting. In one ensuite, green terrazzo, grey marble and deep green doors are paired with solid Tasmanian oak joinery. In another, perfectly book-matched pale grey Carrara marble is combined with black joinery, aged brass fixtures and reeded glass screens. These additions feel both new and old, as their forms provide contemporary echoes of the original dwelling and share the attention to detail and level of craft of the building’s original features.