The kitchen was completely reconfigured to make it more usable and functional, connecting to the newly opened dining room. Light, pearlescent Zellige-style tiles line the backsplash.
A late-1980s Melbourne home is reworked for a new generation, where a transformative gesture of light lets the architecture and interiors speak as one.
Surreptitiously weaving into the existing fabric, it’s hard to identify what’s old and new at Halstead House, a renovation project by Ashleigh Gertis Studio. Located in Melbourne’s inner city, the original home was built in the late 1980s by the current owners’ grandparents. As such, it came packaged up with good bones and a family history worth keeping. The brief, then, was naturally about unwrapping and reorganising what the home could be for the next chapter of its life.
For the young family who live here—design-minded, sociable, raising small children—the original layout had stopped working. The rear of the home was a series of fragmented rooms, awkward in their angles and closed off from the garden. Gertis, whose background is in architecture, approached the project with one clear objective. “For me, the most successful interiors are the ones where you can no longer see where the architecture ends and the interior design begins. I think that’s what gives Halstead House its sense of ease,” she says.
While easy enough in concept, it was quite another to realise it. The entire rear of the house has been reconfigured: the kitchen rotated, the enclosed dining room dissolved, and the living, meals and family zones drawn into one continuous space. The intention was always to open the house to the garden. What no one quite anticipated was the moment the back wall came down. Triangular highlight windows above the new sliding doors have become the project’s defining gesture. “Light enters at a height and angle the house had never experienced before, moving across the raked timber ceiling throughout the day in a way that makes the room feel almost alive,” Gertis says.
Glass clerestory windows were added to the back area, a connection to light and greenery that allows natural light to filter at all times of day.
Glass clerestory windows were added to the back area, a connection to light and greenery that allows natural light to filter at all times of day.
Materiality plays a leading role and Gertis worked with a deliberately edited palette of honed stone, natural timber and living bronze. Each one is repeated through the home in different guises, so the spaces feel of one language rather than a collection of ad hoc moments. These are finishes chosen precisely for how they will continue to age and patina. “I love materials that record the lives lived around them,” she says, noting that, “A home should evolve alongside the people living in it.” It’s part of Gertis’ deeper design philosophy that luxury comes from restraint.
For Gertis, the magic is in a home filled with moments of exactly what it was designed to do—cooking together, gathering with friends, children spilling out into the backyard. “If a space feels quietly right when nobody is arranging it, then I think it’s doing its job,” Gertis summarises. Halstead House is the kind of home where its history is woven imperceptibly with the new—making it a functional family home for years to come.
What has been transformative for the family is the way the home’s spatial planning connects the living areas, and the backyard. A USM sideboard complements the 1980s bones of the original home.
Timber joinery in the bathroom brings a sense of calm, while the pink micro tiles add a layer of luxury.
Timber lines the ceiling in several spaces, including the bedroom, creating a cocooning environment, replete with a vintage glass light fitting.
