3 months ago
25
A reimagined 1870s workers cottage, a suburban house wrapped in vines and a tiny cabin perched on stilts among gum trees are the Victorian winners of Australia’s most outstanding new homes in the 2025 Houses Awards.
Carlton Cottage by Lovell Burton Architecture is unprepossessing from the street but opens up into an airy space when you enter with the house’s flexibility for family living leading it to win the House Alteration and Addition Under 200 Square Metres category.
Owners and architects Joseph Lovell and Stephanie Burton at the Carlton Cottage which took out an award. Credit: Wayne Taylor
Partners in their architecture firm and in life, Joseph Lovell and Stephanie Burton, have two young children and designed the home to be adaptable to the changing needs of their family as their children grow up.
They bought the “pretty dilapidated” 1870s workers cottage on Canning Street and started removing the lean to extensions tacked on the back.
Lovell and Burton kept the footprint of the original cottage and then opened up the rear of the house to a large living and kitchen area with a mezzanine bedroom and ensuite above which can be shut off with wooden acoustic panels.
Loading
They wanted the reworked 1870s workers’ cottage to be flexible to their evolving needs by adopting a “loose fit” design approach that does not prescribe how each room is used.
“We kind of had this term loose fit at the very start of the project,” Burton says. “Obviously things like bathrooms and kitchens, you can’t really move them, but we wanted to make everything else as inherently flexible as we could.”
Large pivot doors, and a sliding fence panel, allow family life to spill out into the garden and, beyond, to the laneway, increasing living space.
“We’ve prioritised space and the perception of space and light over lots of bedrooms or every room, having a bathroom,” Burton says. “This is a little bit budget driven, but the luxury is the light and volume and the connectedness, as opposed to some really fancy stone finish splashed up a wall.”
Joseph Lovell and Stephanie Burton inside their Carlton Cottage. Credit: Wayne Taylor
Instead, robust materials like recycled bricks and polished concrete floors have been used in the build.
Where possible the pair have increased the connection to outdoors with large glass doors framed in timber opening up to the garden, enabling their children to run in and out playing with other children in the laneway behind the house.
“The most privileged thing out of this project is you actually get to live in something that you’ve designed,” Burton says. “You can really see what works, what doesn’t work, and what you would necessarily do again or you might not do again.”
On Burton’s list for things she wouldn’t do again are lime-washed walls in a family home as children’s texta marks are impossible to remove.
Other Victorian winners include the Hedge and Arbour House by Studio Bright, a suburban house in Ivanhoe wrapped in vines which was awarded in the New House Over 200 Square Metres category.
Mess Hall by Architecture Architecture is a Carlton family home that has the appearance of a community centre or after school care facility. The reworking of this Victorian terrace won House in a Heritage Context.
Sawmill Treehouse by Robbie Walker is a tiny cabin suspended in the gum trees in Mansfield. It taps into the trend of small homes and is a serene and restorative space.
The cabin is rented out as an Airbnb and won the best new house under 200 square metres.
While Victorian homes claimed many of the top awards, the Australian House of the Year was won by a Queensland home, Blok Three Sisters by Blok Modular with Vokes and Peters, a trio of coastal terrace houses designed for three sisters who spent their childhood holidays in a house on the same site.
The houses were prefabricated in the Blok Modular factory in Brisbane and then delivered and assembled at the site at North Stradbroke Island.
Houses Awards jury chair Alexa Kempton said many of the winning houses demonstrated highly flexible ways of living and thoughtfully created greater urban density.
“Long-term thinking underpinned the design of homes that can adapt to changing needs over time,” she said. “Across multiple category winners, designs resolved this need for adaptable domestic space with a commitment to quality over quantity. These are homes without excess, with designs that optimise living environments to the last millimetre.”
Most Viewed in National
Loading
