The Mount Lawley Residence project has involved converting a 1970’s Italian house into a reinterpreted mid-century modern style family home.
Our alterations started with the replacement of the roof, with raised ceiling to the kitchen and dining area with new north facing highlights to increase the natural light reaching the heart of the home.
The new design keeps the underground garage and transform the adjacent room into a guest suite, complete with bathroom, laundry, and living area.
The upper floor only required only some minor floor plan alterations which included the removal of a wall between the existing kitchen and dining area to make one open plan space. The walk through walk in robe was bricked up so access was now only from the main bedroom and not the bathroom. Finally a bathroom/laundry area on the back of the kitchen was removed with a new ensuite being added to the front of the main bedroom. The ensuite addition also allowed for the transformation of the front elevation.
The existing tiled roof did not allow enough solar panels to be installed and the pitched roof design is dated. A new flat roof design was adopted and this allowed for 72 solar panels to be installed along with pool heating. The ceiling to the kitchen and dining was raised to 1.3m above the existing 2.7m high ceilings and this allowed for four Velux Skylights to be added as highlight windows. The ceiling extends out over the existing rear concrete deck and where the existing laundry was to create a grand alfseco with 4m high ceilings. Another three large Velux Skylights allow winter sun to penerate into this area. They also open in summer to create airflow. A bank of bifold doors open up the entire kitchen and dining zone to the alfresco. Highlight windows above these bifolds along with the Velux highlights to the Kitchen/Dining zone, allow breezes to pass through this space freely. During the night both sets of highlights may be kept open mainatining airflow and security. Air passing thorugh this zone purges the whole home of heat and along with ceiling fans they negate the use of airconditioning on hot nights. And of course the entire home was converetd to electric with 72 solar PV panels and a 13kw battery supplying power to the home.
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