It’s a simple, timeless and understated, yet bold structure. The striking new residence in Kew East, Melbourne, has more than created extra space for a family whose children are inching toward adulthood. It’s provided them with a modern, comfortable home that will easily see them through the next chapter in their lives, opening up multiple spaces for entertaining family and friends, behind a solid, attractive facade.
Presenting as a single storey residence from the street-front, the home splits into a double storey at the rear, combatting the site’s somewhat challenging slope, and allowing the entertaining area to be located on the same level as the pool.
With its open plan design, a key feature of the home includes six metre windows, spanning from the front to the back of the house, creating a light and bright home that the family can enjoy throughout Melbourne’s variable seasons.
Fortunately, selecting the material palette for this new home was relatively simple for Matthew Herbert of Herbert & Howes: “We love traditional building materials and colours which aren’t too fussy. For us, keeping the material palette to clay bricks, cement render and timber was the perfect choice.”
While Matthew originally intended to cement render the entire home, bricks were introduced to break up the mass of the bold facade. He chose Petersen D91 bricks, which perfectly matched the tone and colour of the cement render, and also simply because he “loves the texture, colour and unique shape of each brick.”
Paul Mastras, homeowner, was also thrilled with Matthew’s choice. “I love the grey tone of the bricks because it matches the render of the house. Robertson’s Building Products gave me a few places to look at, who’d already used the bricks, and I thought the brick looked really nice – they had a similar sort of style, and we thought it worked well,” Paul comments.
“We looked at other bricks, too, and I did see quite a few. But there was nothing as unique as these, with the grey overtones and the blue/grey colour of the brick. It’s really lovely,” Paul adds.
Architect: Herbert & Howes Pty Ltd
Product: Petersen D91 bricks
Builder: JC Design and Construction