Sited in one of the most prestigious streets in Hawthorn, this significant heritage home ‘Cymbeline’ stands proud to the street with a great presence. This presence is punctuated by its scale and robust materiality, coupled with intricate yet flat detailing. These characteristics represent the original architect’s desire to move away from applied decoration and toward the expression of design by form. Castley McCrimmon were engaged to lead and design all aspects of the refurbishment and extension to this important heritage building. Our clients presented us with a brief to update and extend the original home, creating something that felt connected from old to new. Importantly it needed to be a place their young family could grow into, a flexible home for all of life’s occasions, from daily rituals to family celebrations.

The initial stage of the design process looked specifically at the siting of the new extension and in its simplest form, the extension consists of an extruded gabled form. This form extends the existing 3-storey gable to the sites South-East toward the Eastern boundary, making a direct formal reference to the existing building, whilst maximising the new extensions Northern outlook. The existing building is connected with the new via an ‘invisible’ glass link which keys itself into the original building, touching it as lightly as possible.