Private Client
Fox Hall House
Located in Albert Park, Melbourne, Fox Hall House represents a deep collaboration between architects and design-literate clients. Through the concept of ambiguous edges – inspired by Port Phillip Bay’s shifting shoreline – the project reinterprets modernist principles of spatial efficiency and connection to landscape.
Informed by the clients’ sophisticated understanding of modernist design, thoughtful architectural intervention transforms a constrained urban site into a spatially rich home where every element works as hard as a piece of well-crafted furniture.
The result creates architecture that operates simultaneously as furniture, landscape, and inhabited space, establishing fluid connections between interior and landscape while honouring both the clients’ personal design journey and the rich architectural heritage of Albert Park.
Big Picture Thinking
The design process began, as all BKK projects do, with a deep investigation of Country. The site was originally swampland, with Albert Park Lake serving as a remnant of this ecology. Early images show the lake’s role as a food-bowl for Indigenous peoples, with seasonal flooding creating a verdant landscape – a place that Yalukit William described as “a kind of temperate Kakadu, surrounded by sea, creeks, lakes and lagoons.”
Understanding the coastal edge conditions became fundamental to the architectural approach. We researched the rock formations, grasslands, and seasonal changes of Port Phillip Bay, observing how the shoreline ebbs and flows as landscapes shift. This investigation informed the project’s exploration of ambiguous boundaries – a conceptual hook that guided the development of overlapping spaces and blurred transitions between interior and exterior zones.
Collaboration and Humility
The clients brought an exceptional understanding of design that profoundly influenced the project’s direction. Coming from a significant modernist home in Sydney, they possessed not only a deep appreciation for modernist architecture but also a carefully curated collection of modernist furniture and lighting.
The design process involved sharing resonant images from both clients and architects. Influences included Richard Neutra’s Palm Springs architecture, Peter Stutchbury’s Cabbage Tree House, and Andrew Burgess’s Bondi House. Bruce Rickard’s work significantly influenced our approach to blending indoor and outdoor spaces within a robust material palette of masonry, concrete, timber, and glass.
Playfulness and Innovation
The concept of ambiguous edges became central to the design approach. Every space borrows from and shares the compact courtyard garden, creating a series of interconnected zones that serve multiple functions while maintaining strong visual connections. The design creates layered transitions between the exterior and interior, with ceiling planes extending beyond the building envelope to blur boundaries.
A cascading garden introduces planted elements on the upper level of the house. The landscape fringe off the upstairs main bedroom gives back to the neighborhood, providing neighbors with a green outlook. A curved window downstairs with planters brings the garden into interior spaces, while built-in seating areas create moments of pause at these threshold spaces.
Leadership and Advocacy
The project demonstrates a restrained approach to spatial planning, the overall footprint of the home only expanded by 8 square meters while delivering significantly enhanced functionality. This efficiency draws inspiration from post-WW2 modernist principles of space utilisation and material economy, reinterpreted for contemporary living.
Rather than defining spaces by traditional room labels, the design process mapped activities and desired experiences. The existing timber flooring was retained and extended, adding to the ambiguity of where rooms start and finish. Deep overhangs provide passive solar control, creating shade in summer while allowing winter sun penetration.
Transformative Places, Holistic Benefits
Fox Hall House demonstrates how thoughtful design can maximise performance through multiple strategies. The thermal mass of masonry walls, combined with carefully calculated overhangs, creates excellent passive solar performance. The original house’s materials were largely retained and repurposed, minimizing waste and embodied energy. The cascading garden design helps manage seasonal water flow, echoing the site’s original wetland ecology.
The project’s success lies in its ability to create spatially rich experiences within modest means, where every element serves multiple purposes and boundaries blur between inside and out. Through thoughtful design and material selection, Fox Hall House achieves what great residential architecture should: it enriches daily life while contributing meaningfully to its neighborhood’s evolving architectural story.