There is a tendency, when renovating a mid-century home, to treat it as something to be either protected or undone. Kindred House by Urban Habitats resists both options, choosing instead to consider the old and new holistically. Designed in the 1960s, this house once had a generosity of scale that had become obscured over the years, with every intervention seeming to have added further layers of confusion, creating more disconnected rooms that separated the interior from its landscape.
‘We focused on recovering the spatial intent,’ explains Sarah Stephen, the firm’s design manager. ‘We embraced the qualities that were already present while expanding it for modern life.’ Now, with the layout organised around a central courtyard, there is a new openness to the house, its spaces oriented towards natural light and dedicated garden areas.
‘The courtyard allows the house to be experienced as a continuous coil,’ Sarah says, ‘where movement is fluid, encouraging dialogue between different functions.’ Another notable choice was shifting the kitchen back to its original position. A previous renovation had displaced this working core, but it now reasserts itself as the centre of daily life. ‘It re-established a sense of cohesion,’ Sarah says of the move.
There is a discipline to these decisions around layout, with a focus not on change for change’s sake. ‘We looked for clarity,’ she adds. ‘Elements that supported the home’s original logic were retained, those that could be reshaped were refined and anything that disrupted flow was removed.’
Materially, the interior draws from its mid-century sensibility, a heritage that’s evident from its parquet floor. Timber is deployed with careful restraint, layering warmth and texture, while colour is often used as a spatial tool, defining zones.
‘The interiors needed to support both activity and retreat,’ Sarah explains, ‘with moments that hold and elevate the clients’ pieces within the broader composition.’ Artwork, furniture and objects are displayed on the custom-made joinery and framed within the home’s sight lines. The chosen pieces encourage pause and reflection.
The approach Urban Habitats has taken with this design demonstrates the value of working with, rather than against, what exists. It is a project defined not by gesture, but by calibration – where each decision reinforces the coherence of the whole and returns a sense of ease to this home: a quiet alignment between life and architecture. The result is neither old nor new, but revived. @urbanhabitats_sa; urbanhabitats.com.au
