Waterfall House
Glen Iris, Melbourne
A renovation and two storey addition to an interwar art deco house in Glen Iris's heritage Summerhill Estate, for a young family who had outgrown its two bedrooms; the house grew from 99 to 324 square metres and was finished in March 2020, just ahead of Melbourne's first lockdown. The addition is monolithic cream handmade Krause brick that curves to answer the original facade, with glass rolling underneath it like a waterfall, which gave the project its name; portholes in the curved wall nod to the original era, and the brick rises into a parapet hiding a private roof terrace with an outdoor bath off the main bedroom.
The garden, by Eckersley Garden Architecture, is part of the plan: a narrow outcrop of planting creeps toward the centre of the house, stone paving is laid freeform underfoot, and the living room is sunk so the garden sits at eye level. Inside, spotted gum runs through the joinery and wall panelling, and a series of level changes takes up the fall of the site. Clare Cousins Architects publishes the project as Waterfall House, with Oliver Duff and Alistair Nancarrow on the design team and Original Projects as builder.
Clare Cousins Architects
A Melbourne practice founded in 2005 by Clare Cousins, working from North Melbourne across housing, workplaces and cultural projects, with much of its current work in disability and social housing.
Architect Clare Cousins (@clarecousins). Photography Tess Kelly (@tesskellyphotography). Builder @originalprojects. Landscape design Eckersley Garden Architecture (@eckersleygardenarchitecture). Seen via @thedesignfiles.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.