Image Credit : Martina Gemmola, Ruth Welsby and Derek Swalwell
Project Overview
Sited on Wurundjeri Country, WOWOWA’s Hermon House is a delightfully colourful contemporary renovation to an early 20th Century Federation plus 90s renovation. This project perfectly personifies the notion – clients are merely custodians and contributions over the decades are to be honoured and celebrated.
And this yummy Australiana wonderland of textures and materials is no exception with all her rusts and greens, the new insertion opens up the home to the garden and invites the soiree of the year.
A house for hosting. The wonderfully philanthropic clients wanted a home suitable for holding fund raising charity events and have now successfully now held a multitude of celebrations within their beautiful Hawthorn abode. They were attracted to WOWOWA by our Bcorp Certification and values-based practice. They also came to us because they wanted a home that felt comfy and playful with epic amounts of both liveability and lovability. They wanted a party house combined with a home that opened onto a rustic native garden where the chickens could roam. Eclectic. Them.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Monique Woodward, Director - WOWOWA
Basis Builders - Builder
Amanda Oliver - Landscape Consultant
R Bliem & Associates - Engineer
Project Brief
The family of four with 2 teenage boys and 2 cats needed a series of home offices and study spaces each. With 4 bedrooms there was a room for grandma who regularly stayed. There is an ensuite and boys bathroom plus one downstairs and a cedar lined outdoor toilet for the pool. A formal dining room and cosy TV room sit within the original home and a new stair was erected to an existing attic chills space in the roof cavity.
Overlapping the old and new plans highlights the project is fundamentally an interior project. In spectacular fashion we scraped away the compartmentalised rooms within the old footprint and replaced it with an open kitchen living dining and coupled the structural columns, required to hold up the heavy storey above, with joinery pieces and the fireplace. The brief was to make it feel like the transitions through the home felt seamless and organic and to bring the three visual languages of the home together.
Each of the bathrooms is tiled in different colours and all feel uniquely different while still cut from the same cloth. This colour blocking technique was also used on the exterior of the home, all painted in a Burnished Russet colour.
We see all our projects as collaborations with our clients and invite people to weave stories and narratives that resonate with them into the design fabric. We aim to create forever homes and Hermon House is just that.
Project Innovation/Need
It was the photograph of the green pantry laundry with a ginger cat that broke the internet. The rich deep joinery colour complete with avocado resin benchtop is heaven and the clients use the space connected to the old house with the heritage windows as somewhat of a conservatory with plants that adorn the space.
The joinery as a whole is a collection of unusual materials and colours. All chosen with the brief to create a mottled Australian landscape, the kitchen is a stand-out. The glorious combinations of rusts, greens & pinks - the reflected textures fell grounded and almost biophilic. Certain elements allow the eye to dance around the space and others feel safe and solid – the insitu concrete nugget kneading station for example – heavy as hell. The ground back coloured bench is a truly exceptional example of craftsmanship. A relic to probably the only positive covid pastime – pasta making and bread baking, and sitting at a universally accessible height.
This same concrete is featured under the fireplace as a hearth above a finger-tiled base to allow for firewood. Joinery seamlessly integrated with structure is a WOWOWA special to ensure integrity is always maintained. Form & function.
Design Challenge
We imagined the new works to almost be a nugget of Australiana colours inserted into the old bones of the home. Almost reading like an embossing, the small square terracotta tiles laid on the diagonal across inside and out creates almost an Italianate terrace feeling, as the curved veranda sweeps along the new glazed façade and provides both an intimate and expansive space for a soiree.
An interior is also created by the pool area as space is hollowed out to create a lounge area surrounded by the tactile textures – both reminiscent of the heritage but used in a decidedly contemporary way. This is the progressiveness at work – the evocative nostalgia created to gracefully tie the layers of the home together both in unexpected material choices & in the artful connectivity of the interior and exterior. A glorious threshold condition is established and holds the house in joyful bliss.
Sustainability
Nothing. I mean, nothing, is more sustainable than adaptive reuse.
The embodied energy saved is truly the elephant in the room, and Hermon embodies this. One of the most remarkable questions we’ve been asked was – why we didn’t demolish the 90’s renovation and start again. Given the bones of both new and old were double brick with the thermal mass that provided, we think it's obvious why we kept and reworked. Already heavily insulated with double glazed windows, we merely added where necessary.
Where large areas of glazing are provided throughout the home, sculptural pavilion roofs were introduced, so that windows are shaded from direct sun. These outdoor pavillion/follies have green roofs, helping to naturally cool the spaces below, and further improve the ecology of the site. Existing rainwater and harvest systems were retained and enhanced.
Other sustainable considerations included the existing bricks we recycles in the project, and the existing pool was reused and resurfaced. Solar panels have been installed, with a Tesla battery to store energy for electric cars and the home itself. Materials such as the beautiful terrazzo was used in lieu of traditional marble, as the terrazzo has recycled content, and can be 100% recycled.
Architecture - Residential - Constructed
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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