Brookfield House

Project type - Alteration and addition

Reshaping a suburban home around the rhythms of garden and gathering

Brookfield House is an alterations and additions project to an existing suburban dwelling, combining a reworked ground floor interior with a new pool pavilion embedded within a mature landscaped setting. The project operates equally as an interiors intervention and a landscape-driven addition, reshaping how the house is entered, occupied and shared while strengthening everyday connections between people, climate and nature.

The design is grounded in the idea of cooking and gathering as social activities set within the landscape. Key drivers included capturing long vistas, improving the entry sequence, enhancing inside-outside flow and fostering a deep connection to nature. This was informed directly by the client, a horticulturalist, who expressed a desire to “touch the earth.” This sentiment became both a spatial and material guide, influencing how spaces open to the garden and how the house is experienced throughout the day.

Working within the constraints of the existing house, pool and site conditions, the project opens the architecture to its surroundings, creating a stronger and more continuous relationship between inside and out. The new pool pavilion acts as both a destination and a connector, linking the existing house to the pool while engaging with the broader landscape. Its elevated form reaches upward to capture northern light, framing views of the canopy, allowing the garden to define the spatial experience and giving the pavilion a sense of lightness and openness.

Internally, the original compartmentalised layout has been replaced with a more fluid and legible sequence of spaces. Carefully framed views and new openings draw the landscape deep into the plan, reinforcing a continuous visual and sensory connection to the outdoors and improving both circulation and spatial clarity.

The project resolves a clear functional brief while elevating everyday use. Key elements include a pool pavilion with an outdoor kitchen for entertaining, a new main kitchen designed to support social cooking, an improved and legible entry sequence, a formal dining room and an updated living area. Together, these spaces support both large gatherings and quieter daily rituals, allowing the house to adapt to changing patterns of occupation.

The original house lacked a clear sense of arrival and offered limited flow through the interior to the surrounding landscape. The redesign establishes a meaningful entry - a place to pause, remove shoes and orient oneself - before moving intuitively through the home and out into the garden.

Sustainability is embedded through material selection and passive design strategies in the pool pavilion. Local timber species are used for cabinetry and flooring, rainwater is collected on site, solar systems are integrated, and the pool pavilion employs passive principles to optimise light, ventilation and shade.