West Bend House
Northcote, Melbourne
West Bend House is a new family home on a long, narrow block running down to the Merri Creek in Northcote, Melbourne, by MRTN Architects with the interiors shared with Brave New Eco, finished in 2021 for a family of five with teenagers who had built with both studios before. The architects' own words: "West Bend House was conceived as an inhabited pathway, a means to traverse the long narrow site from street to expansive rear garden with views over the banks of Merri Creek." They think of it as a hillside village strung along a garden path, its north-facing courtyard the plaza, stepping down in scale towards the creek, on the site that held the first home in Northcote; and of what a home has to be: "They need to be the Shelter and the Stage for the families that live in them." The materials were chosen with no distinction between indoors and out, red brick floors running through the central study and the courtyard, and the house runs on no gas at all: a 9 kW solar array with a battery, heat pump hot water and slab heating, rainwater collection, reclaimed cream bricks, Silvertop Ash outside and certified timber and veneers inside.
The card is the first frame of the post it was seen through, photographed by Peter Bennetts, and the room Megan Norgate describes on her studio's own site: "A warm timber galley kitchen wraps around a central, monolithic island - part kitchen table/ part workbench." The timber cabinetry runs both sides with its handles hidden in the hardwood frames, under pale stone benchtops and a green stack-bond tiled splashback, the island carries the sink and a brass gooseneck tap, a terracotta tile pendant by Southdrawn hangs over it, the floor is polished concrete, and at the far end the green tiled window seat sits under the timber-framed window with a bowl of oranges on it.
MRTN Architects
MRTN Architects is the practice Antony Martin established in Melbourne in 2011, now with studios in Melbourne and Sydney and its base in Brunswick; it had designed this family's house at Venus Bay before this one.
Brave New Eco
Brave New Eco is Megan Norgate's Melbourne studio for interior, architectural and permaculture design; it had worked with this family twice before.
braveneweco.com.au · Instagram
Architecture MRTN Architects (@mrtn_architects). Interiors MRTN Architects with Brave New Eco (@braveneweco). Photography Peter Bennetts (@peterbbennetts). Builder Lew Building (@lew_building). Seen via @co_architecture_au.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram, with more in a second post.
Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.