Focused Restraint – Brighton House by Adam Kane Architects
Opening up to its surrounding landscape, Brighton House uniquely expands on a previously established generosity and extends the same sensibilities into its considered extension. Adam Kane Architects carves a calmly refined and elevated home within its coastal milieu, focusing on connection.
As a careful and considered balancing between old and new, Brighton House is founded on an effortless flow between the existing and the proposed, with muted, restful gestures and materiality that reinforce a consistency throughout. Located in the same-named Brighton in bayside Melbourne, the expansive residence occupies an equally generous allotment. The original home was in need of both bringing into a contemporary relevance and of making a more considered connection with its site. By utilising the roof cavity to create an additional level and drawing the overall volume of the home into the rear of the site, Adam Kane Architects carefully crafts a series of interconnecting zones. The studio’s known minimalist approach in pushing and pulling geometries creates a sense of balance and harmony in the process.
Burrowing downward, an additional basement level is inserted under the original home to house the owner’s impressive collection of cars. The home then has dual access points, one from the below garage, opening up into the newly formed kitchen and open dining and living in the middle of the home, and the existing original entry from street level. The garage becomes a showcase space through the clean and minimal lines of its concrete walls and linear lighting acting as the ideal backdrop to the impressive collection. The entry on ground floor provides a significantly differing experience, however, moving through the original heritage features. The Edwardian character and charm of the home remains intact from the street, honouring its beginnings and connection to the history in the area, while the addition sits quietly to the rear, distinctively different yet considered through proportion and scale.
A central helical stair marks the transition from the old to the new, as its own sculpture within the home. On the lower level the existing formality of the front rooms is retained and restored, with a pale oak flooring connecting each and creating a sense of flow into the new. Ascending upward, the additional level optimises the unused volume of the original roof, then extends outward to create a master suite, entered through its expansive dressing room and ensuite. The newly formed open living area on the ground floor sits surrounded by full-height glazing and thin framework to allow for uninterrupted views of the garden. Looking back, the upper level sits as an expressive cantilever over the level below, balanced as it teeters out.
