An extra bedroom upstairs can look like a tidy answer on a floor plan. The consequences become clearer when you draw the stairs, the garden below the living room and the route home with groceries. For a Kew renovation or new home, we would work through those relationships before choosing the shape of the facade.
A drawing cut through the house and ground can reveal opportunities that a plan misses: a lower living room meeting the garden, daylight entering over an existing roof, or an arrival that does not require climbing from a basement every day. The aim is to make the house feel coherent through its levels, rather than accumulate rooms wherever they happen to fit.
Recognise which Kew you are designing within
Kew's architectural history includes very different settings. The Victorian Heritage Database describes the Glenferrie Road precinct's Victorian villas, cottages and terraces alongside larger houses. Its account of the Yarra Boulevard precinct in north-west Kew identifies a concentration of postwar Modernist homes adapted to hilly ground and irregular streets. One renovation approach cannot do justice to both.
For an older villa, the important questions may concern the main roof, front rooms, verandah and how an addition can remain secondary. In a Modernist house, the relationship between structure, glazing, roof plane and garden may carry the design's value. We would record the actual building before deciding what to remove. Its date alone does not tell us which parts deserve care or what the current heritage controls require.
Put the garden level into the first room study
On a sloping property, we would draw the living-room floor, terrace and garden together. Keeping every room at the same level may simplify movement inside but create a tall edge outside. Following the ground can reduce that separation while introducing steps into the plan. Neither is automatically the better answer.
Compare the journey from entry to kitchen with the journey from living room to outdoor table. If both are important, the design may need a more deliberate organisation of levels, or space reserved for future access arrangements. A quiet ground-level room that can change use may be more valuable over time than a larger upstairs retreat. These choices should be visible in the early sketches, with furniture and doorways drawn.
Mature planting belongs in that study too. Boroondara's character guidance gives established vegetation and the spaces between houses an important role. Where a tree is being retained, its growing space and root protection need to influence the footprint, excavation and drainage. A tree shown beside a completed design cannot solve a conflict already built into the foundations.
Use height to improve light, not simply to add volume
A tall room can be calm and generous, but height should have a job. In an extension behind retained rooms, a high opening may bring daylight into the new space without relying entirely on a large garden-facing window. We would examine what it also does to the existing room behind it and the neighbour beside it.
An upper window can offer sky while keeping a lower wall available for storage or artwork. Its position needs to be tested against orientation, external shade and how it will be cleaned. Where bedrooms sit above living spaces, structure and sound separation also deserve early attention. A dramatic void may look appealing but take useful area from the upper floor and carry noise through the house.
Give arrival more thought than the garage door
The first metres inside a home shape an ordinary day. We would test a sheltered place to pause, somewhere to put a bag and a route that reveals the garden without exposing private rooms to the front door. On a falling site, a garage level may offer useful storage, but it should be compared with the effort required to reach the main rooms.
Boroondara's guidance treats front gardens, building separation and the placement of parking structures as parts of neighbourhood character. For a new home, we would examine whether vehicle access leaves enough useful soil and planting at the street. For a renovation, keeping an existing driveway arrangement may preserve a garden that would be expensive and slow to replace. The street study should include both neighbouring houses, rather than present the proposal in isolation.
Make the new work clear and durable
White mineral surfaces, timber and carefully proportioned glazing can give new work a restrained presence. They still need convincing junctions. We would draw how a roof discharges water, where timber is protected from weather and how an external wall meets paving or a planted bed. Material samples should be judged alongside retained fabric and the site's light.
The preferred scheme should also explain its construction. Concentrating change in one area may make staging clearer; altering several levels and wet rooms at once may spread work throughout the home. Early builder and consultant advice can test these consequences while the architecture is still easy to adjust.
Bring the awkward level change to the conversation
Photograph the route from the street to the kitchen and from the living room to the garden. Bring those images, existing plans and any survey to benssur, together with what you want the house to support over time. We can compare a renovation, addition or new-home arrangement through both plans and sections, then establish the property's current planning context before developing the preferred direction.
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