Clifton Hill House

Originally designed in the early 1960s by Austrian Architect Ernst A Kalnins with Swiss-qualified consulting engineers, Schmidli and Pfenniger, Herriot + Melhuish Architecture were commissioned to partly refurbish and reinterpret the house interior. Separate vehicle storage, a workshop and connecting outdoor spaces were added to convert this house into a contemporary family residence. Our interventions to the internal plan focused on the opportunities created by reinterpretation of circulation. A clear hierarchy of external forms allows the original house to maintain a singularity of form. The overall composition is very much an extension of the hill topography and strongly retains the original sixties aesthetic. Careful attention was given to providing a warm, crafted interior, combined with the refurbishment of some of the original design elements including an elegant suspended timber staircase. A restrained palette of materials including Blackwood and Tasmanian Ash veneer, gypsum plaster, paint lacquer and natural black mild steel provide definition of spaces. Photography by Russell Kleyn.