Robert Simeoni’s award-winning Palmerston Street House

In contrast to how many architects approach a renovation, gutting the interior and starting from scratch, Simeoni has always taken the path of treading ‘lightly’ with any alterations and additions made to a building. From the street, there’s still the peeling paintwork along with the steel Reo mesh placed across the windows at ground level, an addition made in the 1970s for security measures. Even the duck egg blue used for the three doors, the window frames and 1950s steel garage door, appears to be original, a sign when Italian migrants came to Melbourne in the post-war period.

Each of these additions has been traced in this late Victorian pile, along with the occupants who have left their own indelible mark on each room. The corner room, at ground level, now used as a lounge and as an extension of the home office, still features the marks of splattered paint on the lightly buffed timber floors. Likewise, the garage, used as a conference room, still contains the original plumbing. Partially opened to the elements with an internal courtyard, this space blurs the boundaries between inside and out. The kitchen, adjacent to this meeting area, has only been lightly touched, with the original 1950s kitchen cleverly repurposed to include new appliances, such as a dishwasher, behind the simple timber cupboards. A freestanding Smeg fridge, with its curvaceous form, is one of the few contemporary additions. “It was a perfectly good kitchen. It just needed to be fine-tuned to suit my client’s brief,” says Simeoni, who also included a second kitchen on the first level, adjacent to the dining area. But for this smaller galley-style kitchen, off-the-shelf materials were used, including a fairly standard stainless-steel sink and open shelves.

While the past has been finely reworked, the present has also been beautifully accommodated. An in situ concrete wall ‘pierces’ the two levels, transforming the traditional Victorian building into a monumental piece of architecture. The dining area, with its north-facing terrace, includes a backdrop of chain mesh to separate the void from the garage below, creating an industrial aesthetic in the process. And while there’s loose furniture, there are also two chunky concrete forms in the dining area, one used to display objects, the other as a chaise that benefits not only from the northern light but also the newly planted vines on the terrace. Other parts of the renovation are not as easy to identify. There’s now an enfilade of square doorways that open up the first level, strengthening the connection to the living area and the main passage. Simeoni points out that this is a new intervention that slightly opens up the floorplan while still feeling as though it has one foot in the past.

Other modifications are also not apparent. Windows, with many taking the form of louvred wire glass from the 1950s, work seamlessly with new fine steel windows and doors, ensuring that one doesn’t overpower the other. And while everything is immaculately presented in the home, the ‘scars’ from the past are as rich and engaging as the recent interventions. An extremely small tear in the kitchen’s laminate bench, for example, hasn’t been repaired or camouflaged – simply a sign that there were others who came before, who used the spaces and left their traces behind long after they have moved on.

You can find out more about Robert Simeoni's Palmerston Street House on their Instagram or the Australian Institute of Architects Website. Story by Steven Crafti. Photographs by Trevor Mein.