Old Meets New in This Reimagined Garden House in Australia

The old saying that "two halves make a whole" is a fitting motto for one of Maike Design’s latest projects. The interior design practice recently helped a family of four in Malvern East, a suburb of Melbourne, renovate and reimagine their California-style bungalow while introducing a new extension. "Rather than try to integrate the new and the old, we decided to create a design with two distinct parts," says Maike Design founder Mairead Murphy. 

"Overall, it was a clean and neat little house, but it needed repairs and it didn’t functionally meet any of the client’s requirements," says Murphy, who worked with Bancroft and Malone Architects on the project.

The client’s needs ranged from additional living space and improved storage to a more streamlined floor plan with better daylighting, as the home’s dark, inward-facing layout obstructed views to the generous backyard. Connecting the existing house to the garden became the key design goal.