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Location
Northcote, VIC
Builder
Nook Construction
Photographer
Tom Ross
Architecture
Breathe, Fink & McMahon and Goad Fink
Landscape
Sam Cox Landscape
Respecting the past. Reframing the present.
Tucked into the bushland edge of Merri Creek in Northcote, this home has always been a bit of a prototype. Originally designed in 1990 by Goad Fink and later extended by Fink & McMahon, the house was handcrafted by its original owner, Ian Ezard, who pioneered tongue-and-groove timber flooring from a nearby warehouse workshop. The steel frame? He built it himself, using a forklift.
Fast forward to today, and our role at Breathe was to gently retrofit this much-loved home — no new floor area, just a more comfortable, efficient, and artful version of itself.
Working closely with a family of four who share a deep appreciation for modernist design, we focused on improving thermal performance, rationalising interior spaces, and creating more gallery-like wall space for their growing art collection. Inspired by the house’s original palette of timber and red-painted steel, and artworks by Michael and George Johnson, we added careful colour, stainless steel, and local hardwood.
A new space-efficient kitchen now tucks neatly under the stair, bathrooms have been rethought with honesty and restraint, and the oversized main bedroom was reimagined as a sequence of spaces — for sleeping, dressing and bathing — with a shoji screen shielding a timber tub that looks out to the creek.
In collaboration with Sam Cox, a natural pool and landscape ties it all back to place.
We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which Warehouse Greenhouse stands. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.
Respecting the past. Reframing the present.
Tucked into the bushland edge of Merri Creek in Northcote, this home has always been a bit of a prototype. Originally designed in 1990 by Goad Fink and later extended by Fink & McMahon, the house was handcrafted by its original owner, Ian Ezard, who pioneered tongue-and-groove timber flooring from a nearby warehouse workshop. The steel frame? He built it himself, using a forklift.
Fast forward to today, and our role at Breathe was to gently retrofit this much-loved home — no new floor area, just a more comfortable, efficient, and artful version of itself.
Working closely with a family of four who share a deep appreciation for modernist design, we focused on improving thermal performance, rationalising interior spaces, and creating more gallery-like wall space for their growing art collection. Inspired by the house’s original palette of timber and red-painted steel, and artworks by Michael and George Johnson, we added careful colour, stainless steel, and local hardwood.
A new space-efficient kitchen now tucks neatly under the stair, bathrooms have been rethought with honesty and restraint, and the oversized main bedroom was reimagined as a sequence of spaces — for sleeping, dressing and bathing — with a shoji screen shielding a timber tub that looks out to the creek.
In collaboration with Sam Cox, a natural pool and landscape ties it all back to place.
Location
Northcote, VIC
Builder
Nook Construction
Photographer
Tom Ross
Architecture
Breathe, Fink & McMahon and Goad Fink
Landscape
Sam Cox Landscape
We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which Warehouse Greenhouse stands. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.
Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Breathe acknowledges the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which Breathe stands. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.
