Playful Family Home With A Lightwell At Its Center

January 28, 2022 Post a Comment

Designing homes for families with young kids is always challenging but things get even more complicated when you want the business firm to function as a giant playground while still being functional for the adults. The Mills house is a representation of the success of this challenge. The residence is located in Melbourne, Australia and was completed in 2015.

The Mills residence was a project by Austin Maynard Architects, a visitor led by directors Andrew Maynard and Mark Austin, ii exciting architects set to change the face of Melbourne and to inspire the world with their edgy designs and concepts.

Mills House perforated metal facade trio

The brief was to create a light-filled home that would be fun for the kids and that could also hide the mess in order to be practical and functional for the parents. The house was designed as an extension for a one-level weatherboard terrace already existent on the site.

The original facade and 2 rooms of the existing construction were preserved. However, there's no stardom between these elements and the new extension. The overall blueprint is cohesive and fluid throughout thank you to the use of materials such every bit perforated metallic throughout.

Perforated metallic was used to mistiness the barriers between the indoor and outdoor, allowing the facade to wait solid during the sunny days and to get delicate and meet-through at nighttime. This material was also used for the interior staircase in order to offering it a low-cal, lace-like look and to allow light to travel through, enabling conversation between the floors.

The perforated metallic walls and features as well help control sunlight and avert creating isolated spaces that would make this minor domicile look fifty-fifty tinier equally well equally less comfy and inviting. The living space has glass walls which allow information technology to connect with the outdoor area.

Mills House staircase of perforated metal

The extension incorporates an open kitchen, a living infinite and a dining surface area plus two bedrooms and a bathroom on the upper level. These spaces are added to the existing two rooms, one of which has been redesigned and transformed into a study with its own bathroom.

Because the house is small, the architects wanted to avert filling it with bulky cabinets on the walls and floor. Their ingenious solution was to hide all the storage inside the floor. This allowed them to free upwardly floor infinite and to exit the walls open up and gratuitous of clutter.

They as well tweaked the floor, transforming information technology into a large toy box that makes raising a baby a lot easier and less frustrating. Every bit a effect, the flooring is actually 1.five feet deep. The flooring throughout functions every bit a playground for the kids and a large storage compartment for everyone in the house. The sunken seating area is really cozy, making good use of the design and construction of the house.

Mills House kitchen and dining open to lightwell

The kitchen is placed at the original floor summit, in contrast with the living area. This brings information technology above the toy box area. The dining space is likewise found here. Both the kitchen and the dining infinite open up onto a central courtyard that the architects named a lightwell. This section separates the original structure from the new extension and brings light inside the house.

The area upstairs houses the bedrooms. The master chamber can completely open to a hallway through sliding doors and this allows it to maximize its size, adding nearly two meters (6.6 ft) to the floor infinite.

The bathroom, although not big, has a make clean and fresh design. The focal signal is a custom bathroom designed specifically for this space. Information technology's fabricated of fiberglass and it'due south yellow. Information technology has no seams or joins and was designed this way for easy maintenance. The bathroom looks very sunny and bright likewise thanks to the big windows that open onto the lightwell.

The Mills house is a really fun abode, easy to maintain and optimized for a family with kids. It was too a sustainable project, featuring passive solar heating, high performance insulation, solar panels on the new roof, a large water tank buried within the lightwell and double glazed windows.