Bluff House, Hawthorn East Building Project, Melbourne High Class Home, Architecture Images

Bluff House in Hawthorn East

7 Feb 2020

Bluff House

Design: NTF Architecture

Location: Hawthorn East, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

The Bluff House client’s brief called for an open plan home, with generous living spaces on both the ground and first floor. The original floor plan showed restraints in the functionality of day-to-day living, so NTF Architecture wanted to create a family home where easy living was acquired.

The clients loved the idea that they could completely open up the living zone to allow a seamless flow from the inside to the outside, something that the old house did not allow for. Large full-height doors allow the flexibility to control how the internal and external living spaces connect.

As the property faces north, a large screen wraps around the façade of the house, to not only offer the first floor privacy to the street, but also as passive shading to the North Facing windows.

Upon meeting with our clients, we always push towards using the original bones of the house. Not only does this acknowledge the characteristics of the original dwelling and its setting, but it also ensures that we are not wasteful. This particular project saw us use existing structures and materials, which were not only beneficial in terms of costings, but also allowed us to incorporate a visually striking design feature. In the new home we were able to incorporate original glass bricks that run up alongside the south side of the house, a contemporary adaption to a classic 1960s trend.

The space was made seemingly smaller by ceilings that hung lower, and floor levels that could not be changed. In order to alleviate this sense of enclosure, we implemented double height in areas both internally and externally to emphasis the sense of space and create much larger volumes. The play on scale has created not only an interesting design detail, but has opened up the space in way the old house did not allow for. In particular, the void at the entrance also allows for a better connection between the ground and the first floor.

The new kitchen is a design feature which must be highlighted. We increased the size of the kitchen by bringing the working space right out to the boundary line, without compromising the overall area of the living and dining area. A skylight runs directly above the kitchens floor path which continues the connection to the outside that we see throughout the rest of the house.