Houses Awards 2023: See inside some of Australia's most incredible homes from a moody and modern...
Some of the most spectacular homes in Australia have been crowned at a prestigious housing award ceremony. The acknowledges superior design and architecture from across the country including a reinvigorated historical townhouse with enviable views of the Harbour Bridge to a three-storey masterpiece that somehow makes concrete look cosy. Home of the Year was awarded to a hilltop farmhouse with a dark and moody palette of black timer and stone as well as grassy courtyards featuring a round pond and swimming pool. Also among the winners was an urban breeze-block pad with indoor-outdoor spaces and bursts of vibrant yellow as well as a high-rise 1970s apartment in the middle of a capital city featuring a striking polished aluminium ceiling. Houses Awards jury chair and editor of Houses magazine, Alexa Kempton, said each winner demonstrates the skill and ingenuity that architects and designers can bring to residential projects of all scales and budgets. 'The jury recognised the designers' ability to craft homes of exceptional quality, that push back against convention. We also saw a commitment made by design teams and their clients to creating homes resourcefully and with restraint, signalling the sustainable message of doing more with less,' she said. 'These projects were designed and built amid disruption in the construction industry, ongoing economic uncertainty and the urgency of the climate crisis. This year's winning homes demonstrate creative and responsive design in the most challenging of circumstances.' Taking out the top gong of the night was the incredible Merrick Farmhouse on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. Looking over vineyards with views of the ocean over Western Port Bay and Philip Island, the contemporary farmhouse may look like a modest home from the outside but on the inside is an architectural masterpiece with a unique layout, circular concrete pool and lavish bath and bedrooms. The dreamy home, designed by architects Michael Lumby and Neilsen Jenkins, is a modern, abstract take on an Australian farmhouse and blends into the hilltop it sits on where it's fully exposed to the elements. The structure wraps all the way around a central courtyard, with a pebbled pond interrupted by stepping stones and a round water feature, vine-crept walls and a seating area, which provide residents with a sheltered nature escape within the confines of the chic home. Inside there is a sunken conversation pit in the concrete lounge warmed by a double-sided fireplace while a towering bookshelf is built into the study and a roof-height window wall gives the luxe bathroom and indoor-outdoor feel. Mirroring the water feature in the courtyard is a unique, partially-above ground pool by an outdoor kitchen and alfresco entertaining area that take full advantage of the views. 'The jury was captivated by the consummate interlacing of house and landscape, which instils calm and equilibrium in the home. Living, sleeping and bathing spaces capture views of outdoor rooms and private courtyards, framed by the home's elemental walls 'A material palette of concrete, charred timber and oak joinery is both hardy and understated, elegant in its restraint. There is a comfort and a familiarity in this house; simplicity and solidity are its strengths. 'It is easy to imagine spending the day here, surveying the stillness of the courtyard from the sunken lounge or watching the summer evening sun descend over the bay from the covered terrace.' The aptly-named Shiplap House with its white timber cladding was designed to emulate the weatherboard fisherman's cottages that used to inhabit the affluent eastern-Sydney suburb of Vaucluse it sits in. Architects at Chenlow Little were tasked with designing a home that was both timeless and trendy on a challenging lot atop a headland ridge which is exposed to harsh sunlight, ocean sea spray and strong coastal winds. They created an intriguing three-storey residence with the top level housing a concrete-laden lounge that has a stretching window showcasing picturesque views of the Sydney city skyline, harbour and iconic bridge. Cleverly angled windows throughout don't catch the glare from surrounding suburb and disrupt the views when the sun goes down while a rooftop terrace sits between the lounge and the open-plan kitchen and dining room. Each room is bespoke with plenty of wall space for the owner's ever-growing art collection and wooden built-in shelves create space for dangling vines that breathe life into the space. 'It is complicated to build a house on a headland ridge in Sydney's eastern suburbs, even more so on a battleaxe block surrounded by existing houses. 'Sites are subject to strict planning constraints and a harsh natural environment and bound by fiercely defended harbour views. Chenchow Little has embraced these constraints to deliver an extraordinary new home for a young family. 'Rich and robust, this accomplished design is a glorious example of an architecture practice responding to the challenges of a site with clarity and conviction.' An old worker's cottage in the trendy inner city suburb of Fitzroy, Melbourne was given a 'better not bigger' transformation. The narrow home, dubbed Sunday, is a collection of intimate spaces all with their own individual function but unified in their effort to provide comfort, tranquillity and privacy. Homeowners who had been living in the original structure for the better part of two decades enlisted the help of Melbourne design firm Architecture architecture to improve the property rather than expand it. A geometric motif is displayed in the angled ceiling with exposed beams as well as the retro breeze blocks that create cohesion throughout the home and separate many of the spaces while pops of sunshine yellow add a playful element. The kitchen features an island bench which doubles as booth seating while a sunken lounge looks out into the stunning inside-outside courtyard covered in creeping vines. 'This adaptation of a narrow cottage in Melbourne's Fitzroy fully embraces its gritty urban context. The design maximises its site, hugging all perimeter boundaries in the process. 'It is a courtyard house made to work exceedingly hard to accommodate the stuff of life. The courtyard is a literal extension or, more pointedly, an extrusion of the form, with living arrangements stretched visually and programmatically into the outdoors. 'It is both playful and finely wrought, a very personal examination of what makes a home.' Inside a 1970s brutalist heritage-listed building, once home to notable figures including Kerry Packer and Australia's first-ever billionaire Robert Holmes a Court, is a restored apartment with one particularly notable feature. A shiny silver ceiling blanketing the main living area echos the roof of Parliament train station it the building sits above, gives the home a grand sense of space, reflects the natural light and creates a mirrored metallic canopy. The reimagined flat, in Melbourne's central political district, takes design notes from the era in which it was built and has views over Parliament House and St Patrick's Cathedral, of rising hot air balloons the city is famed for in the early morning and even of the distant Dandenong Ranges on a clear day. March Studio, the design firm behind some of Aesop's most incredible stores, used a sophisticated palette of polished concrete, heavy timber, brass and terrazzo all complimented by bursts of cobalt blue. During the restoration the third bedroom was removed to expand the family room and make way for several zones including the lounge, sitting area, dining space and kitchen and opens up onto a terrace where guests can look down at the bustling city below. The bedrooms were given a more modest makeover while the bathrooms feature softening curved elements, golden hardware and floor-to-ceiling penny-round mosaic tiling. 'The brief was to rework a 1970s apartment in central Melbourne, and the architects have relished the opportunity to pay tribute to the home's former glory in a building that was once dubbed the Tower of Power.' 'A crown of extruded aluminium panels is a mercurial canvas that registers changing light and city views...Newly expanded social spaces are generously scaled and intentionally loose, enabling reconfiguration. 'A restrictive material palette of concrete, Tasmanian blackwood, brass and silver aluminium is punctuated with intense colour, achieving a design that is both joyful and unexpected.' Overlooking Sydney's world-famous harbour perched on an escarpment in the city's State Heritage-listed Conservation Area of Miller's Point is an old townhouse that has been given an architectural revival. The 1840s-built stone home blends the old with the new as the original characteristics were preserved as an homage to the pad's period charm and interwoven with contemporary additions to provide modern luxury. Design 5 Architects collaborated with archaeologists, stonemasons and tradespeople to retain and restore some of the townhouse's oldest features which were impacted by renovations in the 1940s. The facade was stripped of its paint to uncover the stone while a basement filled with rubble was converted into a cosy lounge with a fireplace and exposed timber ceiling beams. French doors open up and frame the views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a sleek light-wood staircase twists down each level. 'The meticulous analysis, exceptional conservation work and attention to detail that has been invested in this project has resulted in a reinvigorated and exemplary outcome.' 'While the conservation works are restrained and rigorous, contemporary interventions successfully reinterpret lost elements and meet their clients' modern brief.' 'This project illuminates 1840s life while guaranteeing the building has a bright and beautiful future.'