One clear lesson from months spent working at home is the value of a house that lets parents keep an eye on their children while they work. The Bayside Residence, a sensitive renovation and extension in Melbourne’s suburbs, answers that need while also transforming a tired art deco home into a contemporary family house. The project, completed by FMD Architects, carefully blends the heritage fabric of the original dwelling with a crisp new addition, creating a clear separation between old and new while maintaining strong visual and functional connections.
The most striking feature of the renovation is the extensive use of timber battens. These slim vertical elements form a new timber extension at the rear of the house and act as a unifying material across multiple surfaces. In some places the battens function as a protective screen, reducing visibility from the street, softening direct sunlight and providing shade for outdoor living areas. Elsewhere they serve a purely aesthetic role, giving walls a warm, textured finish that visually links inside and outside.
The new rear extension opens onto a generous timber deck and alfresco zone that becomes a central family hub. This outdoor area provides safe, visible play spaces for children, while offering adults comfortable spots to relax, entertain or keep watch. Large glass walls and sliding doors dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior, bringing abundant natural light into living spaces and enabling unobstructed sightlines from the kitchen and living room out to the yard.
Inside, a clean palette of timber and white finishes shapes a modern, light-filled living area that combines kitchen, dining and lounge in one open plan. The kitchen pairs warm timber tones with crisp white surfaces for a contemporary yet timeless feel. Thoughtful joinery and window seats add comfort and storage, while large expanses of glazing maintain visual continuity with the deck and garden beyond.
One of the project’s practical features is a series of “smart views” and sightlines deliberately arranged so adults can monitor children at play from key interior spaces. Window seats and low thresholds amplify these sightlines and make it easy to move between indoor and outdoor zones. At night, custom in-ground LED lighting neatly integrated into the deck underscores the architecture and keeps outdoor spaces useable and safe.
The design also makes a clear architectural statement about respecting the original house while providing modern comforts. New additions are deliberately delineated from the older structure using timber battens and thoughtful material choices, allowing the historic character to remain legible even as the family’s needs are met with contemporary solutions. Throughout the home, battens are applied both for their functional benefits and for the way they create a consistent, tactile language between inside and out.
Overall, the Bayside Residence demonstrates how a thoughtful extension can preserve the charm of an older home while creating a contemporary family environment. It prioritizes clear sightlines, flexible indoor-outdoor living and a warm material palette—resulting in a refreshed house that supports modern family life without erasing its architectural past.