Mess Hall

Carlton, Melbourne

Mess Hall is an 1870s terrace in Carlton, in Melbourne's inner north, renovated by Architecture architecture for a family back from years in Paris and Berlin with two young children, and finished in 2023. Michael Roper, the practice's director, says the clients asked for "an active home that would come to life at the end of the school day", so the whole ground floor was opened into one tall room for living, cooking and eating. The kitchen island is a pair of benches on castors that can be rearranged, wheeled aside or packed down, and the light comes from a skylight, a wall of glass blocks along the northern boundary and the sliding glass panels that open to the courtyard.

The building across the courtyard is a self-contained studio for writing and painting, with its own bathroom, that can also serve as a granny flat; the timber battens outside are blackbutt, and Roper says of the studio's structure that "we stripped off the gutters and the downpipes and let the roof sheet float out over the yard". Mess Hall won House in a Heritage Context at the 2025 Houses Awards, where the jury called it "an exemplar project showing that smart spatial transformations can enhance heritage".

Architecture architecture

Architecture architecture is a Melbourne practice founded in 2012 by Michael Roper and Nick James and run from a studio in Fitzroy. On Mess Hall, Roper and James were the design architects and Angus Hamilton the project architect.

architecturearchitecture.com.au · Instagram

Architecture Architecture architecture (@architecture_architecture). Photography Tom Ross (@tomross.xyz). Landscape design Shape and Form. Builder @id_built. Seen via @thedesignfiles and @mukacasestudy.

The picture comes from this post on Instagram.

Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.