Salmon House
Northcote, Melbourne
Salmon House is True Story's renovation and three-level extension of an Edwardian house on a corner at the top of Ruckers Hill in Northcote, Melbourne, finished in 2024 for a household of three teenagers and one adult. The name is the idea, in the practice's own words: "Navigating Salmon House is not unlike salmon swimming upstream; ascending from level to level, guided by instinct and senses." The old house stays at the front and the additions rise behind it as a composition of brickwork, glass, in-situ concrete, grey stucco, reeded glass and timber, with burnished concrete, timber joinery, brushed brass and soft tiling inside, and Grey Ironbark boards running from the kitchen and dining room through the hallway to the library and lounge. Lewis Marash: "Each time you step through the house you are met with different ceiling heights, volumes, and views to the garden, pool and surrounds," and Dan Gayfer on the tone: "There's a real balance in designing something that's unique, elegant and bold, without going over the top. Showing a level of restraint is critical," while Penny Starr Design's garden runs without irrigation front or back, on gravel mulch and evergreen foliage, with a Mediterranean palette at the front, architectural plants around the pool and grey foliage toned to the concrete.
The card is the first frame of the post it was seen through, photographed by Dean Bradley: a desk room lined in timber, its long desk resting on a ribbed glass panel under dark floating shelves and pale overhead cupboards, the Grey Ironbark floor, a low timber sideboard against the rendered wall, and a grey cat sitting in the glazed door to a tiled outdoor stair, with clerestory windows braced in white above.
True Story
True Story is the Melbourne practice of the building and interior designers Dan Gayfer and Lewis Marash, designing urban and rural houses from Brunswick East; Dan started it as Dan Gayfer Design in 2011, and the two have worked together since 2017.
Design and interiors True Story (@truestory.au). Photography Dean Bradley (@deanbradleyco). Landscape Penny Starr Design (@pennystarrdesign). Joinery Silverstream Joinery (@silverstreamjoinery). Stylist Lou Wester (@studiolou.space). Seen via @co_architecture_au.
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.