In a heritage conservation area in Melbourne’s Essendon, Roberts Residence joins a double-fronted character home to a minimalist concrete addition, holding period and present-day together across three levels. Between them, a voluminous gallery link heightens the passage from old to new, its dramatic lightwell drawing daylight and landscape deep into the interior. The original frontage and formal rooms are restored and remain, while the concrete addition beyond opens up in scale.

Past the formal front rooms, a gallery foyer expands in a dramatic play of light and scale – the project’s conceptual core. In-situ concrete walls frame a sculpted stair cast in white plaster, its glowing, curving form set against the raw grey. Threading up through the house, a vertical courtyard binds each level to daylight and lush garden views. Old and new are experienced as a single luminous whole.