AMA updates 'clarke' house with timber battens and pocket gardens

a family home evolves through adaptation

Australian studio Austin Maynard Architects unveils a new residence, titled Clarke, for a family confronting the limits of their long-loved home. After more than a decade, especially after enduring the isolating lockdown, its interiors no longer served the daily needs of two adults working from home and two teenagers. The solution was to expand the home with a space that is layered and considered.

Clarke began as a single-story weatherboard cottage in need of breathing room. Instead of erasing the past, the team worked with it, retaining the home’s bones while reimagining its function. The result is an intricately stepped extension unified by a rhythm of timber battens that blur the thresholds between architecture and utility, form and privacy, old and new.

The home’s overlapping forms, stepped and irregular, are brought together by a facade of rhythmic battens that trace the pitch of the original roof. Clarke’s visual identity emerges through coherence rather than contrast. The battens serve to unify the spaces, shade interiors, and create layered thresholds between inside and out. The pavilion-like lounge room is subtly elevated, opening outward onto the garden through a corner of full-height sliding glass.

images © Derek Swalwell

austin maynard architects celebrates indoor-outdoor life

For the owners of Clarke, the mandate for Austin Maynard Architects was both emotional and practical. ‘Alone together’ became the guiding ethos, a desire for connectedness without constraint. The brief balanced the need for social openness with the essential solitude of retreats, home offices, and teenager-scale autonomy. Inspired by their time in Japan, the family sought simplicity and a fluid choreography of indoor-outdoor life.

Circulation is carefully recalibrated. The reconfiguration of the entry bypasses private zones and leads instead to a light-filled heart. Three pocket gardens fracture the plan, enabling a series of layered views and natural cross breezes. Rooms unfold deliberately, moving from practical ground-floor functions to a light-footed upper volume: a self-contained apartment for the teens, complete with a hammock and a hidden pink retreat tucked beneath the original roof.

Clarke by Austin Maynard Architects reconfigures a suburban cottage into a layered and light-filled family home

nature is invited inward

No element in Clarke is overlooked by Austin Maynard Architects. From hot water tanks and heat pumps to bike sheds and trash bins, necessary services are embedded within the architectural envelope. Sliding batten screens conceal and clarify, maintaining visual coherence while allowing access when needed. Even these moments of pragmatism feel resolved and purposeful.

Where many additions open out to the backyard, Clarke lets the garden enter from all sides. Three strategically placed light wells act as small lungs, breathing light and green into the depth of the plan. This breaks down the traditionally linear logic of the central hallway, ensuring that every interior view reconnects with nature.

Here, individuality is acknowledged and spatialized. The teenager’s spaces accommodate difference with ease, offering quietude and color. The secret Pink Room, requested by one daughter and realized behind a discreet panel door, exemplifies the studio’s thoughtful delight in bespoke gestures. These surprises are never arbitrary, always informed by lived experience.

the design responds to a need for togetherness and retreat with spaces that support both privacy and connection