Carlton Cottage
Carlton, Melbourne
The whole back wall is a row of glass doors 3.2 metres tall that pivot open to the garden, their timber jambs turned side-on so the glass itself does structural work. It belongs to an 1870s workers' cottage in Carlton that its architects stripped of its dark lean-tos and extended with two new storeys at the rear, as their own family home.
Inside, the plan is a twelve-square grid of rooms left loose about their use, with two planted light-courts pulling sun and air into the middle of the deep site. The pale brickwork on the right is the cottage's own Brunswick red bricks, recycled from the site and re-laid under a bagged oxide finish, and the floors run between burnished concrete and reclaimed messmate. In 2025 the house took a National Commendation from the Australian Institute of Architects.
Lovell Burton Architecture
Lovell Burton Architecture is a Melbourne studio opened in early 2018 by Joseph Lovell and Stephanie Burton, partners in practice and in life, who met studying architecture at Deakin University and later worked together at Jackson Clements Burrows before starting out on their own.
Architecture and interior design Lovell Burton Architecture (@lovell_burton). Photography Rory Gardiner (@arorygardiner). Build @cale.peters.constructions. Landscape design @jala_landscape_studio. Home of Joseph Lovell and Stephanie Burton. Seen via @housesmagazine.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram, with more in a second and a third post.
Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.